


The Catch

by CMOTScribbler



Series: epilogue of sorts [3]
Category: Temeraire - Naomi Novik
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Dragon Politics, Gen, Generational Conflict, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Next Gen, Period Typical Attitudes, Post-Canon, Scotland!, and australia after 20 years with jeremy rankin in charge, how to train your dragon/ how to train your human, imagine england after 20 years with Temeraire in parliament, lots of original characters sorry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:47:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 78,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26664661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CMOTScribbler/pseuds/CMOTScribbler
Summary: 1836. Lieutenant Stuart Rankin hates his life: The Australian frontier wars have left him half an orphan, his father’s dragon, Caesar, despises him, and after a close shave with a bunyip, he finds himself shipped to England to be married off to a cousin, his only escape being a post on a third-rate dragon training with the Corps’ most notorious renegade, the Celestial Temeraire. But love, like gold, can be found in the most unlikely places, by those brave enough to search their soul.
Series: epilogue of sorts [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1361464
Comments: 135
Kudos: 40





	1. Gold

_Sydney Covert, New South Wales  
_

_1836  
_

* * *

The nugget in the man’s hand was the size of his dirty palm, ragged and roughly the shape of a howling wolf’s head.

“Where from?”

“Near Bathurst, Captain, though I’ve had a darned hard time gettin’ it to you. The savages did not like us going after the vein. That’s why I came to you first, sir — if anything’s to be made of it, we will need your dragons to drive the blacks away from the rivers. You’ll be amply recompensed for your trouble! The streams are verily running with gold. You’ll be a very rich man.”

Captain Jeremy Rankin’s face did not shift as he took the lump to examine it against the light. “Your name?”

The man made a step back, coming up against the two red-coated soldiers standing guard behind him.

“Daley, sir,” he began.

“John Daley, the fugitive convict, I take it.”

Terror bloomed on the prisoner’s face. “Sir, I… I beg you… Only consider the worth of the find I have-”

“Fifty lashes, and to a cell with him. Mr Gordon, run down to Yulara plantation to tell Mr Sykes we have found the breakaway.”

“Oh, have mercy, Captain… he’ll kill me! He’s a brute! Sir, I beg you, for the love of God…”

“You oughn’t have run twice,” Captain Rankin said. “You knew the price. — Mr Gordon? I have not got all day.”

The young ensign startled and scurried away as Mr Daley was dragged from the room, his screams and cries for clemency echoing away down the corridor.

Captain Rankin looked around the assembled aviators standing to attention, his thin lips drawn downward in an expression of distaste. “Back to work, all of you! This is a covert, not an exhibition.”

The tense row of men lining the walls quickly devolved into a press at the door, all of them glad to be released from the stifling formality of the hall where Captain Rankin, commander of the biggest and only covert in Terra Australis, presided over punishments — frequent; promotions — rare, and a monthly reading of the Articles of War.

“You there, lieutenant!”

There were six men of that rank currently jostling for the door, but something about the inflection of the commander’s voice meant only one of them froze and turned.

“Take this and dispose of it,” Rankin said and tossed the lump of gold across the room without further warning. The young officer caught it and glanced down at it in confusion.

“Sir, how —“ he began.

“Go and see to it,” Captain Rankin snapped. “We will speak at supper.”

-

The tired and perspiring soldier guarding the covert’s prison did not quibble when he was asked to step aside. Lieutenant Stuart Rankin’s reputation for severity almost rivalled his father’s.

Stuart stepped into the narrow corridor between the cells, one hand still closed around the golden nugget in his pocket. The sun fell in slanted rays through the latticed windows, exposing the inmates to all the dust, heat and curiosity of the covert’s courtyard outside. John Daley lay prostrate on his belly in the penultimate cell and did not stir when he stopped in front of him.

“Get up when facing your betters,” Stuart snarled.

Daley groaned, but he did not rise. A swarm of flies buzzed around the swollen mess of his back where the lashes had torn through clothes and skin.

Stuart cast a look in the direction of the guard who had followed him inside.

“What is this wretched state of affairs?” he said, pointing at the filthy buckets standing in each of the cells. “Empty? We don’t want them dying of thirst before the date of their hanging.”

“Sir, I thought—”

“You did not think at all. Go and refill them at once, dimwhit, or I will report your failing.”

The guard stared at him a moment as if he wondered whether the command was meant in earnest, but meeting nothing but a cold stare, he swallowed. “Presently, sir!”

Once he had hurried away, Stuart knelt down. He reached into his coat to draw out a pewter canteen, shaking it so the liquor could be heard tinkling. Daley’s eyes fluttered open at last.

“There’s a good fellow.” He quickly drew the bottle away from the prisoner’s groping fingers. “No, not so hasty! There is something I would like you to do.”

“Sir,” Daley began, pushing himself to his knees with an effort. “…Mercy!”

“Don’t waste your breath,” Stuart said, disgusted. He reached into his pocket and produced a sheet of paper to unfold and edge under the bars. “Can you see this?”

Daley blinked at it and nodded.

“Good. You will mark me the place where you found the gold.”

“But… I cannot read, sir!”

Stuart cursed, and after another look in the direction of the entrance — the guard still absent — leaned forward to point. “Look here, simpleton,” he hissed. “Sydney… the Parramatta river… the Blue Mountains… Bathurst… Now, where is that stream of gold you promised my father?”

-

Stuart hurried past the din of the aviators’ communal dining hall, out of the covert and through the gate of a wrought-iron fence. He had no eye for the lush flowerbeds lining the gravel path to the house that stood in solitary splendour, away from the squalor of Sydney town.

A servant stepped forward in the entrance hall to accept his coat and hat. “Master’s at table,” he whispered.

Stuart nodded. He still felt something of the stench of the prison on himself and quickly glanced into the hall's silver mirrors for any further evidence. No longer than necessary, of course — he did not find much to like about his reflection. Skin forever burned and peeling under the Australian sun, a head of curly raven-black hair so unlike his father’s as to be ridiculous, and eyes of a speckled, changeable hue ill-matched against the Rankins' sharp nose and austere cheekbones. The officers’ wives of Sydney town commonly pronounced him handsome, “a noble countenance, Captain, and hair like the Carthaginians must have had!”, but Stuart knew better than to put any store by compliments paid at his father’s table. He had once overheard a crewman whisper to another that the commander’s son looked like a vengeful child of the Morrígan, and been inclined to believe him more truthful, though of course he’d had the man caned for this piece of insolence.

There was no time to change for dinner, but at the flick of a hand, the footman set to brushing the dust off his clothes and boots.

“Hurry up,” Stuart hissed, an eye on the clock on the opposite wall. Captain Rankin abhorred tardiness as much as slovenliness, licentiousness, vice of any sort, all of which could be found to boot in the Australian colony.

“Done, sir,” the man said hastily, putting away the brush, and led the way through the adjoining corridor to the dining hall, bowing as he opened the door.

Captain Rankin sat alone at the head of the table of polished English oak, his back to the door. He did not turn when the servant announced Stuart’s arrival.

“You are late.”

“My apologies.”

“Have you done as I told you?”

“Actually, father, there is something I should like to—”

“Answer the question, lieutenant. Have you done it?”

Stuart swallowed and fixed the back of his father’s chair. “No, Captain, I have not.”

A spoon was calmly placed back onto a porcelain plate. “Typical. — And what prevented you from the discharge of your duties this time around, lieutenant? Clouds to be admired? Mongrel dogs to be petted? … I daresay I should have put you in skirts and let you handle the dowager Lady Macarthur’s call this afternoon. The tiresome person went on about that charitable subscription of hers for the better part of an hour… The feebleness of women! Rebellious drunkards need work, not charity. — Sit.”

Stuart walked around the table to take his seat at the other end. A parlour-maid silently approached to fill his plate and glass.

“I believe I have found some useful intelligence,” he said.

“Oh, so you fancy yourself a spy now?” Captain Rankin had turned his attention back to the soup.

“I do not,” Stuart said, picking his words carefully. “I have spoken to the convict, that Daley fellow, and he showed me which rivers and hills hold the gold.”

“As most any man will, if you dangle his life before him,” Captain Rankin said, with a dismissive flick of the hand.

“I did not. He was very precise. I believe we ought to at least investigate the veracity of—”

“Oh, be quiet about things you don’t understand!” Captain Rankin flared, his spoon clattering back onto the plate. “The man is a convicted thief and a gambler. That so-called nugget was fashioned from a beaten guinea and two handfuls of dirt, though I should like to know how he got his fingers onto it in the first place… What on earth was he thinking, waving a lump of gold under the noses of dragons? Does he believe me a simpleton who will enter such a foolish bargain, undermining the discipline of all the covert, if one beast after another takes it in his head to abandon post and go digging in the red sand? I should have bound them all by vow of silence this very afternoon. I yet will. — Caesar must not learn of this under any circumstances, do you understand?”

Stuart stared at his own plate, the delicate pattern of phoenixes painted in blue and gold. “What is to become of Mr Daley?”

“What is that to you? We have more important things to discuss. The savages have set a plague of bunyips on the settlers beyond the Blue Mountains, decimating the cattle and spreading terror. There isn’t a safe water-hole within a hundred miles of another. The governor wants them decimated.”

“Decimated? But… how? Bullets and grenades are useless against them when they can simply retreat into their burrows.”

“Don’t presume to lecture me. The answer is simple enough. They must be poisoned.”

“Poisoned?”

“Yes, baited and poisoned. Just the sort of mission even you ought to be able to accomplish — I will stay in town, there is a delegation of Chinamen expected and it is important our soft-hearted Governor Snodgrass does not lose his wits. Besides, I cannot be holding my hand over you forever. It is high time you begin asserting yourself over Caesar.”

“Asserting myself,” Stuart echoed, drawn-out.

“Yes, asserting yourself, and stop bleating my words back to me. You are to be Caesar’s captain, but your demeanour around him leaves much to be desired. Really it is no wonder he accords you no respect. Dragons obey for two reasons: convenience and fear. Convenience of regular feedings, and fear of their captain. They want a firm hand on their harness.”

“Caesar only wants gold,” Stuart muttered.

“What? I cannot make you out. Speak up when addressing me.”

Stuart cast a dark look at his untouched plate. “I said, as you command, sir.”

-

He went over the maps, trying to commit to memory as much of the terrain as might be retained, especially the water holes and any features suitable for navigation, which he scratched out onto a sheet small enough to be tucked under his shirt. He stowed the small ebony-cased compass in his flying coat, alongside a firesteel and tinder-pouch. He cleaned his pistols and knife, replenished the cartridge-belt and filled a knapsack with biscuit, a second water-flask and one of rum, a small pair of folding binoculars and a flare of the Chinese kind sold in the harbour, all stuffed down under a folded blanket and a length of coiled rope. He rummaged through his wardrobe until he found a string of polished cowries hidden between the stockings: money was near meaningless to the savages, but for some odd reason, they prized the shells. He worked fastidiously until everything sat snugly, the pack no bigger than the regulation one carried by the governor’s redcoats. The preparations consumed the best part of the night, a few hours of snatched sleep following only after everything had been arranged to his satisfaction.

When Stuart walked back to the covert for the morning raising of the flag, the air was still pleasantly cool, vibrating with the chatter of the parakeets and cockatoos in the trees.

A prostrate figure lay on the street just outside the covert walls, face-down. First, Stuart thought him drunk, a common enough sight in the colony.

“Must you lie about in everyone’s way?” he hissed, stepping over him. “The dragons will get at you.”

There was no reply. Stuart paused and turned, half-wondering whether to send a runner with a bucket of water. But the man lay so very still, and under the coating of dust, his back was torn and bloody.

He gingerly turned him over with the tip of his boot. There was a cudgel-wound on the man’s forehead, and the face was Mr Daley’s, his eyes staring and dead.


	2. The bunyip's den

“What is in it?” Lieutenant Rankin asked, holding up one of the opaque stoppered bottles.

“Arsenic and _nux vomica_ , sir. A most potent combination,” Fletcher, the surgeon, said, and went off on some calculation of the dose to be stuffed into each butchered goat’s belly.

Stuart nodded and turned away before the man had finished. “Carry on.”

He did not see the grey tail sweeping across the ground, and the next moment, was stretched out headlong in the dust.

“Oh, I did not see you there,” Caesar said, putting his head down to peer at him, slit-pupils gleeful under the vermilion of his brow. “You’re ever so clumsy,” he added in an undertone. “Clumsy and ugly and poor. “

Stuart pushed himself back to his feet, beat the dust off his coat and swallowed down on the tirade he wished to make. It had been one of Caesar’s more innocuous tricks after all.

“No harm done,” he said instead, though the smile on his face died the instant Mr Fletcher had disappeared behind the canvas screens erected to offer shade from the baking sun while they worked to prepare the bait.

“Don’t test me,” he hissed at the dragon. “And put that goat down! You’ve already eaten two and we do have a use for them.”

“I will eat as much as I like, for I am a flag-dragon and have exerted myself to the limits today, what with all that baggage,” Caesar proclaimed and let himself drop to the side, flapping his wings just enough to set up another cloud of dust.

“You are a fat and lazy lump and father spoils you overmuch,” Stuart said, or rather wanted to say: the dust sent him into a coughing fit.

Caesar rolled onto his back and lifted the goat to his mouth to bite off the head. “Pardon? I did not hear you there. You must speak up when addressing me. Have you been taken ill?”

“You wish,” Stuart croaked, groping for his canteen. He tried to swallow down anger and dust both, but the small sip remaining did not suffice to wash both away, so he picked up a handful of stones to hurtle at the cockatoos in the next tree and watched them lift away in a screeching dazzlingly colourful cloud.

-

They found a den at nearly every water hole along the Northern trail that stretched from the Blue Mountains across the interior, the water-casks ringing hollower by the day.

The smugglers never liked a patrol, but for once, no opposition was offered, no sabotage evident. They posted a watch at all hours of the night, but no arrows, spears or boomerangs came raining from the hills, no shots were fired, no carcasses with bellies full of shrapnel left out for the dragons to choke on.

They dropped the goats with their poisonous stuffing at every single burrow they found. Sometimes a pair of fangs instantly hurtled forward to snatch it, the lurking monster distracted long enough for one of the dragons to fly a pass over the water for some frantic refilling of buckets, but never enough to recuperate all the day’s expense, and as soon as the bunyip detected the vibration caused by a dragon’s wings, it would thoroughly lose interest in a goat.

To make matters worse, the bunyips grew wary. Some sort of intelligence seemed to be conducted along whatever wicked system of tunnels mired the desert, and two weeks into the venture, their goats were shunned. They fed the few remaining ones to the dragons and shot kangaroo instead, which answered reasonably well for bait but required expenditure of ammunition and activity in the glaring sun while the parching thirst gnawed at them.

The thought of turning around briefly crossed Stuart’s mind, but he did not voice it. Caesar yet complained and moaned just as he always did, so his strength was far from spent, and he would be damned to be the first to buckle. Besides, Caesar had been almost civil so far, meaning he had not butted Stuart away from the cask or tripped him up with a full canteen in hands, for the charming choice between a day of thirst or of asking the guard to step aside to allow him a second helping, a liberty he would not have permitted any of the crew and consequently did not like to take for himself. Stuart even began to wonder whether a rapprochement might have been reached, a ceasefire of sorts. Perhaps even Caesar’s twisted mind had recognized something of the severity of this infestation. Though more likely, Stuart reminded himself, his father’s dragon had merely calculated the diminution of his own captain’s fortune, should the riches and accompanying bribes stop flooding into Sydney.

The casks had almost run dry when they came upon a small water hole without signs of any burrows, with a native camp sheltering in the neighbouring grove. From aloft, Stuart counted upwards of thirty domed grass huts, much larger than the usual size of the villages. Caesar roared and dove at the sight of the water without waiting for orders, and the other two dragons followed close behind. The savages made a senseless show of defence, hurtling their spears and showering them with arrows. A volley of rifle-fire dispersed them, ripping clean through their shields of painted tree-bark. Caesar cheerfully plunged through the camp spreading a trail of destruction, huts torn open, baskets spilled, the embers of the cooking fires scattered so some of the grass roofs went up in flame. The blacks fled into the rocky hills.

Stuart climbed down as the dust settled. He could not wholeheartedly condone Caesar’s greedy rampage, but there were too many men in earshot, and he knew better than to reproach him and draw attention to his orders being brazenly ignored. Without hope of ever exerting any form of control over the beast, he might as well try to make Caesar’s plans and whims his own.

So he looked around unflinching and faced the crew, faces full of impatience to get to the water. Caesar had already waded out into the small lake, splashing around and raising clouds of silt. By contrast, Rictus’ and Veloxia’s captains had succeeded at making an orderly display, their dragons bending down neatly to drink while their crews refilled the communal casks before their own canteens. Anger seized him.

“I want everyone split by order of watches,” he snapped at the men. “One group to refill the casks, another for the canteens, one to keep a watch on these hills, and the last to make a search of the camp, for any evidence of collusion with the bunyips, and any food we can requisition.”

They eyed him strangely, the last-named group in particular, but nobody dared offer objections. It was a nonsensical task, he knew as much, signs of collusion with bunyips as likely to be discovered as those of a conspiracy with the rocks or the rain. If anything, the camp looked wretched, the huts crowded, the stores sparse. Perhaps the savages, too, had been driven into straits by this unnatural plague. The search turned up a small amount of silk, jade beads and small items of porcelain, of the usual kind traded across the interior, in greater volumes now that one difficulty after another seemed to beset the Canton port, but that was hardly news, and none of it looked valuable enough to represent any sort of special favour by the Chinamen. Stuart still collected some of it, grateful for an official glaze on the routing of the village, and even the other captains did not disdain the baskets of meat taken from the drying racks by the huts: no mean task to feed three dragons in the middle of a desert.

Completing his inspection, Stuart almost stumbled over the body of one of the savages lying by a smouldering hut. A young warrior, bare save for his loincloth, a strip of red silk used to tie back the matted mass of hair, and lines of white mud drawn over the face and chest in a swirling pattern, the bullet wound still bleeding. After a moment’s hesitation, he knelt down. The body still felt warm to the touch.

“Sir, shall I…?”

He whipped his head around. It was ensign Gordon, and the boy uncertainly pointed at the empty canteen on Stuart’s belt. Rictus’ Captain, Drewmore, stood behind him.

“Yes,” Stuart said curtly, unclipping the flask and tossing it to the boy. He was delirious with thirst, that was what he was. “Fill it, and be quick about it.”

“I see you’re appraising our handiwork, sir,” Drewmore said, drawn-out. “I hope you find it satisfactory.”

He stood menacingly, cutting off the sun. His reddened face and unkempt beard were dripping water, his coat half off and his clothing a shambles unworthy of any Corps officer, well worth reporting back to Captain Rankin, but under the casual tone, there had been a steel-edged warning. They resented him, a mere lieutenant, being placed in command, Stuart knew. He must not display any weakness.

“Yes,” he said, slowly rising to edge his chin upwards and return the hostile stare in kind. How he despised them all. “Good shot.”

-

The bunyips soon grew wary of kangaroo, too, so they had to begin humouring and cultivating the creatures in a most humiliating way, leaving three or four pieces of untampered game for each one poisoned. When even this ceased to produce results, Caesar, prepared to be crafty where he was growing impatient to return to Sydney with its many comforts and the proximity of his Captain’s own cattle farm, devised a scheme.

The subterranean bunyips had a keen sense of smell, but poor eyesight. They appeared to sense movement, launching themselves as soon as an unfortunate animal of a size worth ambushing crossed into the radius of their den, to grasp it with a pair of black-taloned forearms and break its neck with a single bite of their heavy jaws.

So according to Caesar’s instructions, they would drop a butchered kangaroo with a long piece of rope tied to it, hide at a distance, and then tug at the rope to cause the limp body to jolt about and gradually pull away, like a game for an outsized temperamental cat. And indeed, the impression of an innocent piece of prey first appearing and then bustling away proved irresistible to the bunyips. At a certain distance from the mouth of their shrub-covered holes, they lunged. The aviators could even do away with the wasteful offering of multiple pieces of prey, a definite improvement given how hard the game was to come by. Caesar strutted about with his chest puffed out, and told everyone who cared to listen that he had thought of it all along, and it was their fault alone for not consulting his superior intelligence any earlier.

By the charts, they were approaching the barren heart of the continent when they found a small water-hole hidden in a valley edged by tall ridges of red sandstone, with stands of eukalyptus trees. The bunyip’s den with the telltale tufts of shrubbery shielding the entrance lay hidden near the shore. The local crowd of rock wallabies avoided it diligently.

They set about the usual work: a dead kangaroo dropped near the den with a generous dose of Nux vomica stuffed into its belly, the rope running into the hands of two of Rictus’ crewmen hidden behind a few boulders further along the sandy valley, with a guard of riflemen disposed nearby in the shade of the overhanging ledge. The dragons stayed out of the valley not to give the game away, but Caesar insisted on perching at the top of the eastern ridge to observe his genius in action once more, and demanded Stuart’s accompanying him. Stuart was thoroughly tired of the spectacle by now, and even more so of Caesar’s puffery, but he had little choice, so he acquiesced and took along one of the riflemen. It was never good to be alone on top of a cliff, with Caesar.

The sun was searing on the barren ridge, but the bunyip’s den was in perfect view. Rictus' men began hauling in the rope. The small carcass jerked and edged away by small stops and starts, ten inches, two feet, three, a yard… Stuart held his breath in anticipation of the explosion of sand and fangs that invariably occurred at a distance of three or four yards.

But nothing moved.

Stuart edged forward a little, wondering whether the beasts had grown wary of this trick, too, or whether the hole was perhaps abandoned, despite its advantageous position in this little oasis. The men, too, seemed perplexed. The rope had fallen slack.

Stuart cast a look at Caesar, who wore an expression of bored unconcern.

“Sir, look!” the soldier mouthed.

Stuart looked around again, and suddenly, the bunyip had struck — in a fashion. It lay exposed almost to the middle of its reddish-brown rump, the kangaroo clamped in its jaws. It shook the small body vigorously as if to stun it, and then dropped it again a yard or two from the sandy mouth of its cave, before craning its head around to rumble something into the gloom of its den.

Stuart watched perplexed. They must have stopped at twenty, thirty burrows by now, but he had never seen anything like this.

The next moment, a second head appeared at the mouth of the cave, angular and vicious like the first, but much smaller. It attempted to seize the kangaroo, jumping forward, but fell short by a considerable distance. It landed flat on its lantern jaw, gave an annoyed squawk and then rallied to waddle up to the kangaroo. Another cub appeared behind it, blinking its small eyes at the sun and batting at a few clods of grass in what could only be called a playful fashion. The first turned from the carcass to hiss a challenge, and the next moment they were tumbling one over another to bite each other’s tails, webbed hindfeet squabbling. Finally, the old bunyip made a low growling noise and batted a claw in the direction of the kangaroo.

The cubs interrupted their game to gingerly circle it, until one of them took heart and jumped, fangs and jaws outstretched, to seize the poisoned bait and drag it back to the tunnel mouth.

“Sweet Jesus, three at a stroke. The commander will be pleased to hear o’this one, sir,” the soldier whispered next to Stuart, rousing him from a sort of fascinated trance.

Stuart did not think. He reached to his side, yanked the loaded rifle out of the man’s hands, lifted it to his shoulder, aimed, and fired.

The shot exploded, echoing far through the valley, and struck a termite heap far to the beasts’ left, which burst into a splutter of caked red mud and scurrying insect bodies.

The cubs dropped the prey and dove back into the tunnel. Their shrill yelps were drowned out by the old one’s roar of surprise and anger. It raised its bony snout, took scent, and found it.

Bunyips were ambush predators by habit, patient lurkers rather than rabid attackers, but a mother’s instinct for protecting her young seemed to overcome even this barrier of nature. She hurtled forward in a blind rage. Stuart could hear the screams from the shrubbery below and a spatter of pistol shot, to no avail, as evidenced by the terrible cracking and growling noises that followed.

The soldier nearly dropped the rifle when Stuart thrust it back into his hands, but he did not turn to look. He had his own pistol out and a cartridge to load it frantically, cursing himself for not keeping it ready. The sounds of carnage had roused Caesar from his complacent slumber, but the next moment, the bunyip heaved itself over the cliff with blood-streaked fangs, in a cloud of red dust that gave it the air of a smouldering hell-beast.

Stuart stumbled backwards, pushing the soldier aside, and fired his pistol. It took the bunyip in the shoulder, making it recoil for an instant, but it barely slowed, the small eyes burning with rage.

It shot forward, swiping down a talon to knock the pistol clean out of Stuart’s hands. Somewhere to his left, the soldier whimpered and covered his face. Stuart dodged as the bunyip lashed out again, cursing as he pulled his sword. No aid, of course. They did not even need an opportunity to dispose of him, no. He had managed it himself. _So deeply grieved, Commander. So sorry, Captain._

The beast wheeled back around, webbed feet nimble on the sandy ground, and charged. There was no escape. Stuart knelt down and rammed the sabre upwards as hard as he could when it came upon him, aiming for the gullet. The bunyip bellowed. The force of its attack carried them both over the crest of the hill and down in an avalanche of dust and debris.

They fetched up near the water, the ground swampy and treacherous. The sword was gone. The bunyip lurched to its feet. More from instinct than thought Stuart pulled the knife he had concealed in his boot to stab at the creature’s face when it came down again. It recoiled and hissed in displeasure at so prickly a piece of prey. Stuart tried to edge backward and get to his feet, but his left leg was a blaze of pain and would not carry him. The monster circled him growling. It seemed barely hurt at all. In a moment, he would be snatched up and shaken to death and put out for a toy.

“Caesar!” he screamed, his voice blank with terror. He could not help it. “Caesar! Come, I … I beg you!”

In retrospect, he could not tell for sure what had happened, whether the other captains had acted after all or whether Caesar, in his magnanimity, had decided his lesson was adjourned. All he heard was a hiss and a roar and a pair of wings descending from above, burying a pair of sharp claws in the bunyip’s neck. Shots fired, dark blood pattering down like rain, disgustingly warm. The monster bellowed once more and then fell silent, a large body thudding onto the ground next to him, strangely muffled.

Stuart felt hands on him. “He’s bleeding out!” one voice said.

“Serves him right,” another hissed. “Worse than the old one, he is.”

“Hold your tongue. He’s barely more than a boy. Can you patch him for a ride, Fletcher? I’ll take him up on Velly, she’s our fastest flyer.”

There was the noise of fabric being ripped, distant though he could feel fingers on his bare skin. “There,” came the laconic voice of the dragon-surgeon. “Small scratch.”

Someone made a retching noise, and then something was rammed right into the heart of the pain. Stuart could not suppress a groan.

“There, easy does it… hand me that bandage, at once!”

“Is he with us?”

“Think so… Lieutenant? Sir?”

A hand smacked his cheek ungently as something was slung around his leg and tightened, fixing the pressing knot of pain in place. “Take your… dirty hands away!” Stuart bit out.

“Ah, that’s him alright. We love you too, sir!”

“Keep… a watch…”

The hand let go abruptly. “What?”

“A watch… for the small blaggards.”

“Oh, yes, yes, of course.”

He was not sure whether his order was heeded, but it did not matter: he was handed up onto a dragon’s back. His fingers ran over a patch of warm hide. Not Caesar’s, but a rougher, more elongated kind of scale, he noticed with some relief. His leg was growing numb. If he lost a leg, he would be an invalid, and unable to serve aloft.

There was even greater comfort in that thought.

-

When the surgeons had finished with him, Stuart lay still with his eyes closed. His head was foggy with laudanum, but his body still too tightly wound even to drowse. He consoled himself by running over the Articles in his head, ingrained by years of rote, the familiar drone almost a lullaby.

_… He who through cowardice, negligence, or disaffection, shall in time of action withdraw or keep back, or not come into the fight or engagement, or shall not do his utmost to take or destroy every beast which it shall be his duty to engage, every such person so offending, shall suffer death…_

He was not dead, despite the four-week ordeal of the return journey, which was a great shame.

_… He who shall commit the unnatural and detestable sin of buggery and sodomy with man or beast, shall suffer death …_

In all likelihood, he would not even lose the leg. That, too, was a blow.

_… He who shall desert or entice others to do so, shall suffer death…_

And now Captain Rankin’s sharp voice rang not only in his head, but right outside his door. “I will see him now.”

“Sir, no, you must return later,” came the hushed voice of one the surgeons. “A difficult operation… a period of rest…”

But whatever other objections he raised were brushed aside, for the next moment, the door of the room was thrown open and Captain Rankin strode in.

Stuart tried his best to sit up and brace himself for the inevitable dressing-down, so far avoided only on account of the pack of bloodthirsty surgeons that had descended on him the moment he had been helped into his room. Captain Lowe of Veloxia was a well-meaning idiot.

But Captain Rankin smiled and picked up a glass, turning to the dressing table to fill it. “Good,” he said.

Stuart blinked, puzzled. He had interfered with the lawful culling of three bunyips and made a spectacle of himself in front of three crews who would ensure the story of Lieutenant Rankin spurned at talon-point, as it were, by his father’s dragon would reach every ear in Sydney covert. He could not, from any angle, pronounce it _good_.

“Very good,” Jeremy Rankin said and walked over to the bed to put the glass into his hand. “That leech told me your wound went deep to the bone with a portion of flesh scraped off in tatters. It is sure to leave a nice scar. With a sufficiently heroic story to accompany it in the dispatches, I see no reason the Admiralty can refuse you your step. — Oh, and dear Caesar sends his regards. He is so very grieved. I will tell him you are improving already.”

Stuart had lifted the glass to his mouth and nearly spat it out again, half from disdain for this piece of obnoxious wheedling on Caesar’s part and half from bafflement: he had tasted not water, but his father’s prized Berkshire Gin.

“And don’t you worry,” Captain Rankin went on, quite misjudging his pinched expression. “I know that bleating wretch of a rifleman claims it was you who upset the beast, using his weapon… the very ridiculousness of the tale. Well, he will face the consequences of his lies. Four men killed, my own son gravely wounded… He will go to the gallows.”

Stuart breathed the beguiling juniper fumes and tried to knock his thoughts into order. Captain Rankin had that gin brought by special order from England. A bottle was worth more than an ordinary labourer could hope to earn in a month.

“But — no,” he began. “Sir, I… I really must beg you to pardon the man.”

Captain Rankin’s brow rose. “Pardon him? Man up, lieutenant. There is no place for softness or false gallantry in those destined to captain a dragon, or else methinks I ought to address my letter to Admiral Laurence instead, and ask him if he needs someone to help him coddle his dragon and read him bedtime stories.”

“What letter?” Stuart asked, in deepening confusion. Admiral Laurence was his father’s very model of poor and overindulgent dragon-handling, advanced to flag rank over the heads of worthier men and guilty of an oft-quoted litany of sins, yet the remark still seemed nonsequitur.

“The letter of recommendation to your uncle, the Earl of Kensington, of course. You must go to England, to complete your education and bring you in the way of a fortune to fix you in Caesar’s esteem.”

“Bring me… in the way of a fortune?”

“Do not repeat my words back to me, I find it very vexing,” Captain Rankin said, the strangely indulgent mood finally yielding to his more usual tone of nasal irritation. “It is simple enough. My brother will be able to introduce you into the right circles, and once there, you must make it your task to impress a lady of adequate fortune and make her your wife.”

Stuart stared at him. “Sir, you… you cannot be serious. I haven’t the slightest wish to be married! And is it not frowned upon, for an aviator? Caesar will hardly like it, even if it makes me rich. Besides, I doubt any lady of rank and fortune would consent to so remote a banishment. — Cannot my uncle pay me an allowance? He has twenty thousand a year, after all, and it is I who is continuing the service, not Anthony, so he might-”

“That is not for you to decide,” Captain Rankin interrupted him sharply. “And your so-called wishes are of no consequence at all, lieutenant. You have orders, you follow them. The Chinamen and their serpents are growing ever more impertinent, but the admiralty is beginning to see reason. We are to have a rocket-launching ship in the bay, only the dragons will need to be trained to fly with it. I will send Veloxia, for she is small enough to fit aboard the _St Vincent,_ the convict-ship presently in harbour. You will transfer to her crew, and you will not come back into my sight until you have accomplished the task I set you. You are a Rankin, one of the oldest and most distinguished families in the land. There are many desperate for an introduction to such circles as you will naturally inhabit… Beside that, use whatever cajolery is required. I surely needn’t elaborate.”

“But father,” Stuart said, bold where he was growing desperate, “can I not go searching for gold here? I have all the intelligence that Daley fellow gave me, and surely gold in our own rivers is better than some heiress on the far side of the world! A bird in the hand must be worth two in the—”

“Silence! There is no gold in this country and there never will be, not as long as I’m commander here!” Rankin proclaimed. “Old Macarthur’s lot might like it, what, rabble from all over the world coming to dig for gold and undermine the authority of the crown… Before you know it they will be collecting taxes and electing magistrates and justices of the peace to put above us and quibble over any measure we may take, throwing our colony wide open to the onslaught of enemies of every description.”

“Surely better than the shiploads of human waste matter currently carted to our ports," Stuart said, heatedly.

“Of course not,” Captain Rankin huffed. “Men are there to be led, not to develop ideas above their station. The convicts don’t. If they outlive their sentence, they are grateful enough for a plot of barren land to labour over, and will not give us trouble. Contrast that to a situation where they find themselves with gold in their pockets! … Have I made myself clear?”

A habit of obedience held. Stuart nodded, and muttered: “Perfectly clear, sir.”


	3. Crossing the equator

Veloxia was no great prize: a dirt-common Reaper and stunted, a mere eight tons, and her captain, John Lowe, a placid fellow nearing fifty who was content so long as he had his pipe and his peace. Stuart's assignment as first lieutenant was hypothetical at best when she already had a full complement and all he could do was hobble about on crutches. Yet he resented being reduced to a dead weight.

In Sydney harbour, he had bought a dozen dog-eared novels for shipboard company, the sort Captain Rankin despised to see lying around the house, a small and inconsequential rebellion. There hadn’t been many farewells to be made. He had shaken his father’s hand and made a curt bow to Caesar, and the dragon had wished him every success in a most insincere tone of voice while his captain patted his side as if the beast needed consoling. He had even paid his mother a visit, scraping away layers of fallen eucalypt bark and leaves with one of his crutches to reveal the marble slab _Sacred to the Memory of Grace Rankin._ The grave was falling into greater disrepair with each passing year.

There was no-one else dear to his heart. His station had kept him well segregated from the rough-and-tumble company of his fellow aviators. He had exhausted a string of private tutors sent from England, the first few for not being remotely able to replace his mother and the following because it seemed good sport and nobody stopped him anyways, his father prepared to turn a blind eye to tantrums, practical jokes and even outright violence as long as Stuart spoke the King’s English, displayed good table manners, and conducted himself decorously in the presence of guests of suitable rank, all of which he could do without the advice of a spineless looby.

Aboard the _St Vincent_ , he spent most of his time staring at the horizon or up at the ceiling of his small cabin. The walls were thin enough that any whispers could be easily overheard, meaningless chatter and gossip and once a muffled tirade that concluded:

“So why the devil did he have to be foisted onto us? He’s doin’no good to anyone, least of all himself.”

“Oh, he’s been sent to make a catch, old Jack says. The commander wants him to beguile some poor girl and swindle her out of her inheritance.”

“Oh? Well, that puts a different complexion on the matter. If ever he finds one, it’ll be a cold embrace indeed! Like his poor mother in her day. Not much use to that one, bein’ mistress of the manor, poor little lass…”

Stuart let the words wash over him, unable to muster even the force of indignation to thump his fist against the bulkhead. There was no use defending his mother, a pale and silent ghost for all he could remember now. She had never been of any use whatsoever, her only bequest the wrath of a dragon jealous of his very existence. His lord uncle had only managed a single boy and a girl, and had either neglected or found himself unable to convince a lady of suitable rank to uproot herself for the Australian colony to join his brother, so, in what must have been a fit of exceptional exasperation, Captain Rankin had wed his own servant.

Stuart liked to think his mother had possessed something to catch the eye, a beautiful face or a sharp wit or a gentle temperament, to make his father single her out. But more likely she had simply been the one with the most teeth remaining and devoid of rashes suspect of anything contagious after the long sea journey, waved over at one of the auctions in the harbour where the convict women were paraded before the farmers and settlers. As a high-ranking officer, his father would have had first pick, but Stuart did not know how the marriage - an odd proposal for persons of such wildly divergent station even by the standards of the colony - had come about. He knew better than to question his father on such matters, and his mother was dead and buried for near on fifteen years now. Caesar sometimes mentioned his captain’s late wife, but only to remind Stuart that she had been poor, plain and unworthy, without treasure to her name and with hair the colour of soot instead of his captain’s pale gold.

He still had one of the novels in his hands, open at the page he had been staring at for the best part of an hour, and could have laughed at the ridiculousness of it all: an easy task to slay a dragon to win a hoard and gain some maiden’s hand. An altogether more difficult one to woo a maiden to gain a fortune and thus a dragon; even supposing one wanted the dragon, or the maiden for that matter.

\- -

The sailors and aviators ignored him as they went about their tasks. Captain Lowe alone honoured the fiction of his assignment by asking him to his table every evening, though half these invitations were declined. The familiar Southern constellations faded and new stars rose as Stuart turned twenty, and his leg healed.

He had been aware of a certain anticipatory mood taking hold of the ship, followed by bustling activity, but still was not at all prepared when one day, the door of his cabin was thrown open without warning and two sailors burst in.

“How dare you have the temerity of disturbing-” he began.

“Have you not heard the call?” one of the intruders boomed. He was a grizzled, bearded man decked out in a white sheet wrapped over the rest of his clothing in a manner of makeshift toga.

“Quit this folly,” Stuart snapped. Of course he had heard the bellowed order, _all hands up, shorten sail_ , but of course not applied it to his own person. “Out at once, before I report you for insolence!”

“All must answer the call! Or Neptune will be angry at the presence of an unbaptised man!”

“An unbaptised man? Have you taken leave of your senses?”

“One who’s never crossed the equator,” the second sailor put in as if stating some self-evident truth. “He must be baptized in the presence of King Neptune and Amphitrite!”

“Amphitrite,” Stuart said, scathingly. “Will that be you?” He was even more ridiculously attired than the first, with a moth-eaten dress and wig, and his face painted to resemble the worst kind of harbour tart more than any Greek goddess.

But they were done answering him, and seized him to drag him up and out by the nearest hatchway. He did not resist, brawling with this order of personage vastly below his dignity, and contented himself with the certainty of redress once their captain would learn of this outrageous behaviour.

But to his mounting indignation, the captain and officers of the _St Vincent_ were already assembled on deck. She was a lumbering ship with a square stern, riding with much the grace of a bobbing cork. Having delivered an unlucky freight of convicts, the soiled bulkheads of the tween decks had been knocked down at Sydney to make room for a cargo of wool and whale-oil, topped off with a few chests of opal and porcelain, and consequently, there were few freshman victims the crew could seize for their line crossing ceremony — besides Lieutenant Rankin only a few young hands from Veloxia’s crew likewise born and raised in the colony, and the pitiable ship’s cat. Still the whole deck seemed a shower-bath. The newly initiated aviators already stood dripping wet and grinning bravely, scraps of tar and paint on their faces and bare chests. When Stuart was dragged onto the deck, the cat was just being dunked into a bucket of filthy bilgewater, turning it from a bristling fur muff into something resembling a dripping wet rag doll, to the jeering of the spectators, until it hissed, scratched the nearest sailor’s face and shot up the main mast.

Stuart had no such means of escape. He glimpsed Captain Lowe at the stern, out of the range of the splashing but without any sign of objecting, and even Veloxia craned her head interestedly to watch the proceedings. The faces of the men nearest him spoke a plainer truth: no divine will, but simple human spite demanded this humiliation.

He was glad he had not brought up his coat. It would have been wholly ruined when they descended on him with their buckets until he was covered in filth. He tried to endure it scornfully, not to give them the satisfaction of drawing out a response, but being splashed with sea-water from three sides at once to the laughter of all around, a small fish hitting his face and flapping away over the deck, was the final straw. He fought free of the hands holding him down, knocked the bucket out of the hands of his next assailant, picked up the fish to smack Neptune across the face with it, and then turned on his heels to storm back belowdecks to change out of his ruined clothes, quite reborn and in a simmering rage.

\- -

“Well, out with it,” Captain Lowe said, taking off his flying-gloves. Stuart had come to his cabin earlier than the rest of the officers and begged the favour of a word. His skin still tingled from the scrubbing required to get the filth off again, and he now stood to pointed attention while the dragon-captain let himself drop into a chair and propped his feet on the sea chest standing against the wall.

“Captain, I have come to speak to you about the outrageous treatment inflicted—”

Lowe waved a hand while combing his pockets for his pipe. “Ah, lieutenant! No more of it. You must pardon the sailors’ pranks, but what business you had hitting King Neptune with a mackerel, I should dearly like to know. I've had to pay three barrels of rum to pacify the ocean-god, and still they are muttering you’ve brought bad luck on all the ship’s company.”

“I do not care for superstitions," Stuart said, "and I am not speaking of the deck hands’ folly. I was rather referring to my treatment by yourself and your crew. The commander assigned me, and I came with every intention to serve. Instead, I have been put aside, made an object of ridicule and the target of the foulest slander.”

Captain Lowe stared at him, quite forgetting his search. “The devil, lieutenant! I do not question your willingness, but you could not walk fifty yards! I do appreciate things have improved, and must call your recovery quite astonishing, but even so, it will not do. You know the conditions of your transport.”

Stuart blinked at him in deep irritation. “Do I?”

“Of course you do! I already have a first lieutenant and no complaint to make of him, and neither Velly nor the crew will be happy to see Dobson replaced, nor any other officer. Captain Rankin was within his rights to assign you, of course, but that does not mean I am obliged to cut out perfectly good men without cause, when in England, you have other matters to attend to!”

“And what matters would that be?” Stuart hissed.

Captain Lowe at least had the decency to look abashed. “But I… I heard…” he began, and then rallied to exclaim: “Lieutenant, you are quite forgetting your place! You haven’t your father’s hand over you here.”

“My father’s absence is truly regrettable,” Stuart said, coldly. “But my uncle, Captain, is the Earl of Kensington. He is exceedingly well connected at the admiralty board. I have often heard it said it can only hurt a man’s prospects to have him for an enemy.”

He saluted and left, without waiting for dismissal.

\- -

The next morning, a sullen-looking midwingman knocked on the door of his cabin.

“Captain Lowe begs you take charge of this morning’s drill, if you please,” he said, staring down at his feet.

Stuart was so satisfied with the message that he easily overlooked the lack of grace in its delivery. “Very well,” he said. “Tell Captain Lowe and Veloxia I shall be up presently, and for the men to bring up the harness.”

He very nearly smiled as he strapped on his carabiner-belt. Of course they would spite him, every last man of the crew, but that did not matter. He was well used to it, and in any case, there was nothing as distasteful as the idea of a popular officer.


	4. Long live the Queen

A week before Lieutenant Rankin’s first attendance at court, His Majesty William the Fourth, King, Defender of the Faith, did him the dubious favour of dying in his bed.

“Oh, what a tragedy!” Lady Louisa Rankin exclaimed, letting herself drop onto a couch with a theatrical half-spin. “No balls! No entertainments! No concerts! What is one to do? We might as well pack up and go to the country.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” her brother Anthony, Lord Rankin, said without looking up from the newspaper Stuart had handed him. “You can hardly blame the old man for dying, Lou.”

“He might have waited just a little longer! I was due to be presented at court next week, and had my dress and train all ready, so-”

“Thank you for reminding me, I was in acute danger of forgetting,” Anthony yawned, turning over another black-edged page. “Well, it says here he is to be laid out in state. We could send for tickets.”

“Oh, what a morbid suggestion!” Louise scolded.

“You can ask the lieutenant to accompany you, and I am sure you will be perfectly safe,” Anthony said, with an exasperated look at Stuart who stood by the window observing the pigeons on the opposite roof.

He had only half attended to his cousins’ bickering and now turned away reluctantly. It seemed unfair to be saddled with Louisa for a whole afternoon, but then, her debut at court would have afforded him with his own introduction there, in which case his father could not have claimed he had not tried to obey, even if Stuart wouldn't have wagered tuppence on his chances of discovering, in the queue of Louisa's costumed year-mates, a single lady whose conversation would not have bored him to death.

Louisa put up her chin. “Well, I must have some black lace, and so must Miss Wirral. Lieutenant, you will accompany us, as my brother says!”

In the corner, young Ann Wirral looked up from her embroidery, startled. A poor relation who had been taken in for charity’s sake, there was something mousy about her small, scurrying frame and her irritating habit of perpetual industriousness. When she was not embroidering, she was netting a purse or knitting or mending Louisa’s things, every gesture radiating silent penance, and with all other means of distraction forcibly removed from her hands, such as in the antechamber just before they went through to dinner, she would fumble at her fingernails or split hairs in half, which always made Stuart’s skin crawl. Despite the atmosphere of misery radiating from whatever nook she occupied, Louisa rarely sent her away, likely pleased with how she displayed by contrast: plump, auburn-haired and rosy-cheeked, Louisa was generally considered a beauty.

“Very well,” he sighed, casting a look at the grey London sky as the ladies hurried away for their caps and shawls. After three weeks penned up with his relations, he missed even patrols.

\- -

The plan to decamp to the country — Surrey, to be precise — was bandied about during the shopping expedition, until Louisa decided that her father, the Earl of Kensington, was unlikely to leave the city with Court and Parliament in disarray. Therefore, she too had to stay, considering she was not prepared to put up with what she called a skeleton staff of country oafs and even less in the way of entertainment than could be found in London. The gossip in the shops had further soothed her temper. The heir apparent to the throne was Princess Alexandrina Victoria, the king’s niece, a girl her own age, and Louisa was hopeful that the new queen’s court would be kept in better style than that of a crusty old man with a boring stick of a wife, by which she meant pious Queen Adelaide.

Stuart let her prattle on, nodding at polite intervals, feigned interest in ribbons and laces and spent a crown on a small jet ornament to hand to the unavoidable Miss Wirral, more to anger Louisa than to please the duckling, though he instantly regretted the gesture when Ann Wirral blushed and stumbled over her words of gratitude.

He would have liked to curtail the trip there and then, but Louisa declared herself in need of new gloves, astonishingly so considering the dozen or so pairs she already possessed, and would not even be dissuaded by the fast-gathering rainclouds. They reached Piccadilly as the first drops begun to fall and Louisa paused outside a tailor’s shop, in what Stuart, too late, recognized for a plotted act of revenge.

“Dearest cousin, I almost forgot — how selfish of me,” she said, placing a hand on his arm. “We must go and see how your coat is coming along. It might want some final adjustments.”

Stuart looked away, cursing silently. He had been hoping devoutly that she would have forgotten about that whole business. In preparation for the ball at court, he had commissioned the first properly fitted uniform coat of his life, a ludicrous waste of money when his father had assigned him a puny sum in the first place: Caesar would not have taken kindly to too much capital being wasted on him. He had meant to return quietly to ask the tailor to keep the coat to sell to another man, now that he found himself without use, and recoup at least some of the cost. But there could be no chance of that now, not without making himself look a fool and a miser. So he held the door open and shook the water off Louisa’s umbrella as the ladies stepped inside. He did not understand why it had to rain so very perpetually in this country, even in June.

The shop was an old and renowned address. Scarlet and navy blue ruled the shelves, interspersed with the dark velvet of courtly dress and the more fanciful colours of the liveries of the grand houses. Silver and gold winked from buttons and wire-encrusted epaulettes, braid and gilt lace, and from a pair of gold bars on a bottle-green coat half-concealed behind a screen.

“Oh!” Louisa exclaimed, pointing at it. “Is that yours, lieutenant? How magnificent! Only look, Miss Wirral, won’t he look dashing?”

Stuart stepped closer and shook his head. It was a captain’s coat, surprisingly so. Aviators did not care much for bespoke tailoring, his father and great-uncle being rather the exception to the rule. The uniforms of the rank and file were sourced in bulk and cheaply through the victualling board, with the very bottom scrapings sent to Australia after everyone else had had their pick, as he could attest from reams of shirts ruined by running green dye and boots disintegrating after a week’s use, and even the officers usually made do with more modest addresses.

Yet here it was, strangely defiant against all the red and blue. He could not help lifting a hand to touch the double bars, imagining them, just for an instant, upon his own shoulders, the tall embellished collar against his neck, _Captain Rankin of…_ well, of Caesar, and here he shuddered and quickly let his hand drop.

“Lieutenant Rankin! Such a pleasure to see you again, and in such fine company,” the voice of Mr Gieves, the head tailor and proprietor, rang out behind him, and he turned to see the man hurry towards him trailed by an assistant. When Louisa expressed her admiration for the coat, he drew the screen aside, happy to have his work admired.

“We count very few gentlemen of your line of service among our patrons,” he said with barely repressed pride. “But recently, Admiral Laurence — I trust you know him, he is so very famous — that great man honoured us by commissioning this coat for his eldest son. Quite to your own advantage, sir, as it meant we already had the cloth in store. We require the colour so very rarely otherwise.”

“Indeed,” Stuart said frigidly, his stance expressing quite clearly that he would not have expected a gentleman’s tailor to gossip like a ragpicker. Louisa, too, gave only a paper-thin smile at this enthusiasm for her father’s parliamentary enemy.

“Well,” Mr Gieves said, looking contrite as he realized his error. “But let us see about your own coat. I have it right here.”

He took it from his assistant’s hands and held it up: severely plain. The regulations of the Aerial Corps left greater leeway than other branches of the service, even at his rank, but Stuart disdained any flash or dandyism.

“If you would you care to follow me, for a final fitting?” The tailor smiled nervously and nodded at the shop window. “I am glad you at least haven’t brought a dragon to stick his head in and demand more gold.”

\- -

The rain continued into the evening, sending rivulets of water gushing down the windowpanes when they sat at supper. Over roast mutton and dauphinoise potatoes, Louisa gave a mocking rendition of the tailor’s unguarded praise of Admiral Laurence.

“… _So very famous!_ Well, anyone can be famous for villainous deeds. He and his beast - the name escapes me…”

“Temeraire,” Anthony supplied between two swallows, and looked confused when his sister shot him an ungracious look. A sharp wit was not something Stuart could detect amongst the future Earl’s many excellent qualities.

“The man is mad,” the present Earl said gravely, waving over one of the footmen to refill his glass. “A dangerous fanatic who holds far too much influence with the street-rabble, as a result of a handful of military successes incurred through more luck than judgement.”

“Dearest,” the Countess said. “You promised me not to talk of politics at the table.”

“It is imperative our young impressionable Queen be protected from such wild ideas, by people who have handled dragons for centuries and know about their character!” the Earl went on, quite in keeping with Louisa’s predictions. “Admiral Laurence and his lot would have swaths of houses knocked down until dragons could walk all over London! The hunting in the North is already spoiled, what with a beast setting itself up as lord over any shred of heath or swamp. And this whole nonsense of having dragons in parliament, reducing our venerable institutions to a laughing stock... Even the Corps is growing unreasonable. Not enough to have breeding grounds in Scotland or Wales, out of the way of civilized society. No, these days it must be open coverts in every major city! Dragons everywhere, putting men out of work and making the horses shy… What is your view on it, lieutenant? I daresay in our Australian colonies, men and beast still know their places."

“I have nothing to add, Mylord,” Stuart said, carefully piling his fork with peas.

“We saw the coat that Laurence villain had made,” Louisa said, picking up her glass, “in shockingly poor taste, of course, very gaudy; but then, what is one to expect if a dragon is allowed to have a say.”

“You said you thought it very splendid,” came the unexpected whisper of Miss Wirral’s voice from the end of the table. “And that you found the lieutenant’s coat too plain.”

Louisa gave an exasperated sigh. “Well, I only suggested my dear cousin’s coat could do with more braid, more buttons, more… prettiness, to mark him out for the worthy man he is.”

“I do not think he needs a pretty uniform to do that,” Miss Wirral said, and then abruptly fell silent and turned a blotchy crimson.

“Oh, of course you do not, you silly goose,” Louisa said, tossing her curls. “Your loyalty can be won with a trifle, like this cheap trinket he bought you.”

Miss Wirral looked like she would break into tears, one hand raised to the cameo on her neck as if to shield it. Louisa turned back to Stuart.

“Well, lieutenant, I will allow you perhaps do not need a pretty uniform. But your face would be so much less forbidding if you smiled. Whyever must you always look so angry? Do you find our company disagreeable?”

Stuart stared back at her. Did she want an honest answer? Did she want to know that on many days, anger was all that held him together?

Anger had always served him better than sadness. It had caused him not to break on the cliffs of grief when his mother had died. It had allowed him to emerge victorious from brawls with boys bigger and stronger than himself when he had been put into the Corps at midwingman rank at the age of thirteen and the cadets set on him with flying fists and the brutality of Sidney street-urchins. It had steeled him for endless drills and watches, eyes and ears peeled, absorbing like a sponge, secure in the knowledge that once Caesar became his — or rather, he Caesar’s — there would be no room for mistakes. It had led him to pass his lieutenant’s examination with flying colours when nobody had expected him to answer correctly more than by chance, it being a byword of the service that those too assured of a dragon were rarely committed serving-officers. It had allowed him to withstand Caesar’s malevolence, had stopped him from being downtrodden and wretched in the face of Captain Rankin’s blind spot for his dragon’s demeanour, and it would yet see him triumphant, once he had gathered enough loathing and spite to face down Caesar and make him obey. It was shield and armour, hope and comfort, far too useful a weapon to put aside; a vestal flame to be tended, not smothered, and if it made him ugly in the eyes of a spoiled little girl, that was a price he was more than willing to pay.

The thoughts rose on his mind in rapid succession and a shadow of them must have crossed his face, for Louisa looked away, lips trembling.

“Oh, you frighten me,” she whispered. “You are a wicked man, lieutenant.”

“I think we shall withdraw,” the Countess said and rose to take her daughter’s arm.

“Miss Wirral, stay here a moment, if you please,” the Earl said, causing the girl to almost stumble over her feet and bow her head low as if she expected punishment. Kensington turned to Stuart. “Lieutenant, if you would be so kind as to go to my study and wait for me there.”

\- -

Stuart paced in front of the fire the butler had stoked afresh, the room behind him cast into a dim glow, and tried to work the cramp out of his bad leg. Ambling slowly through shops and sitting on cushioned chairs did it no good. He wondered what the Earl could mean to say to him. Louisa went into fits of temper all the time. Surely the simple license of an unfriendly glance did not deserve a formal reprimand?

There were letters on his uncle’s desk and a large open ledger of figures in neat rows and columns that attracted his attention. Kensington kept a grand house in the best part of town to be sure, and a country estate whose park alone extended over eight hundred acres, but Stuart felt certain that the twenty thousand pounds were a thing of the past. A whole wing of the town house was stripped bare and shut, the staff seemed curiously decimated, and the coach house held a single emblazoned carriage instead of the three it could comfortably have fit. The Earl often spoke of the rising wages which he blamed on poor government, and of the wretched uncertainties of the Indian trade where a large part of the family’s fortune had been invested.

The temptation to pry was too great to be resisted, but walking towards the desk, he almost stumbled over a dog lying on the rug before it. It lurched to its feet and gave a warning growl.

“It’s fine, old fellow, it’s only me,” Stuart muttered, holding out his hand to let the dog sniff it.

He knew the animal, one of his uncle’s greyhounds, an old favourite gone rheumy and half-blind. He had snuck it half a meat pastry and rubbed its belly during his first week at the house, and recognition now struck the animal forcefully. It sat back and wagged its tail hard enough to make a muffled thumping noise on the Persian carpet. Stuart knelt down to rub its silky ears, the ledger momentarily forgotten. As a child, he had wanted nothing more than a dog — with a dog, one would never be alone. He had even brought one home once, one of the orange dingo pups that roamed the streets of Sydney and fed on refuse. For a few weeks he had doted on the thing, named her Dash and fed her with scraps from his own dinner. Then his father had returned from the Northern border and shot her when she came careening from the garden, wagging and drooling, jumping up to scratch his boots heedless of any command Stuart might shout in desperation. To Captain Rankin, a baseborn creature only deserved its life so long as it was obedient and useful, and poor Dash had been neither.

He quickly rose when he heard approaching steps and the next moment, his uncle entered: an older version of his father, tall and hawk-nosed, though without the lean muscle derived from service aloft, a man secure of his place in the world.

“Stand easy, lieutenant,” he laughed. “Down, Achilles!” At the flick of a hand, the dog huddled back down.

“Mylord, I am sorry to have given offense,” Stuart said, determined to have it over with, “and will offer my sincere apologies to your daughter as soon as we rejoin the ladies.”

“Given offense… to my daughter?” Lord Kensington looked confused. “Oh! Louisa. No, that is not why I asked you here. I want to speak to you on another matter. — Pray sit.”

“I am comfortable as I am.”

“Are you? Well, jolly good.” He seated himself in the tall leather armchair by the fireplace. “Now, my boy. I wouldn’t have begrudged you that attendance at court. But I doubt you would have enjoyed it much. You see, even in the finest circles, many accord your service a measure of respect far below its just deserve… I do know Jeremy suffered, back in the day.”

“Indeed,” Stuart said blankly, wondering whether his uncle thought he had grown up behind the moon. Of course he knew aviators were frowned upon in polite society — if it was any different in Australia, then only because any governor was dependent upon his father’s support, his father who, during the course of the frontier wars, had knocked discipline into the slovenly and mutinous ranks of the New South Wales Corps, resulting in the unique situation of Army men taking orders from an aviator, even if grudgingly: the colony would have been wiped off the face of the earth otherwise.

“Now I believe the other reason Jeremy wished you out was the need to come to a suitable… arrangement, a tie to a lady of means,” Kensington went on. “Now, I do not like to contradict my excellent brother, but I will be frank with you. It is not at all likely that such a situation would have arisen, even without the current limitations… You must not take it to heart, but aside from your profession, there is the remoteness of Terra Australis, as well as the... other side of your consequence…”

Stuart pressed his lips together.

“Oh, and now I have you all ruffled! I do not mean to carp, not in the least…” Kensington sighed and fell silent, drumming his fingers on the chessboard that stood on the small table next to his armchair. “Tell me,” he started up again, “you are acquainted with the… facts of life, are you, my boy?”

Stuart frowned, then nodded slowly. Of course he was. It only took a walk down Sydney harbour where certain establishments did not bother with such niceties as curtains or doors.

“Good,” Lord Kensington nodded. “Now, you might have wondered at my motives for taking an interest in the education of the young Miss Wirral.”

Stuart did not stir, but he had indeed.

“Well, suffice it to be said that her mother, though poor, was once very dear to my heart, and I am anxious to see her daughter comfortably circumstanced, yet distant from society’s evil tongues. I did write to my brother about this great wish of mine, wondering whether he knew of a suitable match in the ranks of his officers. And he sent me you.” He put his beringed fingers together and looked up at Stuart over the arch of them. “Well, I believe the arrangement will suit all concerned.”

Stuart took a moment to grasp what had just been said, the ripples of it spreading through his body to chill him to the core. So there had never been a choice at all. His family would have let him make a fool of himself at court, any humiliation a desirable side-effect to make him more willing to bend to a yoke that had been prepared all along. He had been sent to be used like chattel, to take care of an unwanted by-blow, and his father hadn’t even bothered to tell him so to his face, _an arrangement to suit all concerned…_ Had it been put before him plain and undisguised from the outset, he might even have yielded to the logical force of the argument. _Your so-called wishes are of no consequence at all, lieutenant..._ This way, he only felt the bitter sting of betrayal.

He fought to keep his face under control and then crossed his arms, putting his chin up. “Did my father express to you the question of his dragon?”

“Yes, yes,” Kensington said, dismissing this minor consideration with a flick of the hand. “I may not be a Corps man, but I know well enough a dragon must be bought with a hoard. You will not find me ungenerous. I cannot afford a noise over it, but I am perfectly prepared to, upon your marriage, sign over to your name five thousand pounds in the four percents. Will that do to buy your commission… your dragon, I mean?”

“You are too generous… too kind,” Stuart managed, stiffly. “I will think about it.”

Lord Kensington rapped an impatient hand on the game board. “Heavens, what can there be to think about? You are a sensible young man, not one of those deranged romantics. My brother made it quite clear what he wanted, I am giving it to you. The favour I ask in return — to take the girl off my hands and keep her in the modest style she is accustomed to — is hardly difficult. I can sympathize with not wanting to be shoehorned, but wedlock is hardly the be all and end all. And I needn’t stress again that as an aviator, your chances are bound to be… limited.” He gave him a piercing look. “It is much better for all concerned to have this thing done quietly, without exposing the family name to ridicule.”

“Mylord, I am first and foremost a soldier,” Stuart said, and, resorting to white lies: “I perhaps should have told you earlier. I have had word from my regiment in Scotland that I am wanted there.”

\- -

“Four shillings,” the dragon perched in the yard of the coaching inn demanded, and Stuart stared up at him uncomprehendingly.

“I am a serving member of the Aerial Corps,” he clarified.

“You sure are, boy,” the dragon said, batting an eye disinterestedly. “A very wet one at that. Makes no difference to me.”

“But…” Stuart began, and did not know how to carry on. The dragon had a harness, and a few bags bulging with letters and parcels.

“Look here, if you’re going to argue, you may find someone else to take you to Scotland,” the dragon said, poking a talon at something stuck between his teeth. “My rates are more than reasonable.”

“Wait! I want to speak to your Captain… your handler,” Stuart corrected, when the dragon looked confused.

“Ain’t got none, haven’t had for the whole of my life,” he said. “If you’re just going to stand there and stare, excuse me, I got places to be.” He lurched to his feet and cast a speaking glance at the mail bags.

Of course, Stuart thought. Before him was a living example of all the evil his father and uncle had spoken about, the direct consequence of the pile of ridiculous liberalist legislation passed over the last two decades, the so-called emancipation of dragons. Unharnessed beasts roamed the land, blissfully ignorant of human corrective, and they even entrusted them with the post.

“Listen, I really do not have any money on me,” he said, growing desperate. The thought of cutting the buttons off the new green dress coat at the bottom of his knapsack briefly crossed his mind, but no: it had cost him too dear.

The dragon shrugged his wings philosophically and turned away, still prodding at his snout with his foreclaw.

“What is wrong with your teeth?” Stuart called after him.

“Noshing,” the dragon muttered around his claw, and then suddenly winced and spat out a small, revolting clump of yellow-tinged saliva. “I think it’s me gums,” he said, miserably.

“Turn to the light here,” Stuart commanded sharply, pointing to one of the lanterns hanging by the entrance of the inn. “Let me see… is it this here?”

“Oww!” the dragon howled, recoiling, and Stuart just about managed to snatch his hands back before the snaggle-toothed maw clamped shut again, removing the putrid sore from sight.

“Well, that looks bad enough to be sure,” Stuart shrugged, pulling out his knife to make a show of polishing the blade. "I've seen dragons dead of rot, with something like."

The dragon quivered and stared down at him. “You cannot help me out? Your lil’ hands are so much more useful…”

Stuart raised an eyebrow. “I could.”

The dragon’s head swung down at once, mouth wide open. Stuart held his breath against the fetid smell and continued to interest himself in the knife.

The dragon swallowed, straightening up again. “Well, come to think of it,” he said. “We’ve got a new queen, haven’t we? In honour of her, I’ll take you for free. — But you mustn't tell anyone I’ve done it, promise? Especially not Ricarlee’s lot.”

Stuart sighed. “Long live the Queen.”


	5. The downed dragon

Chester, the postal dragon, warmed considerably once Stuart had succeeded at pulling out the finger-long splinter of bone lodged in his gums, and proposed a detour to the lakes of Cumbria where he had been hatched. Stuart did not protest. He did not relish the prospect of his fellow aviators’ glances and whispers, so as far as he was concerned, they could have gone all month, delivering mail to farms and manorhouses while the neat hedgerows and rolling hills gradually grew wilder and more ragged. Reading "Ivanhoe" aboard the _St Vincent_ had perhaps engendered a fanciful expectation of Britain, he realized, staring out into the landscape under a smudged blur of rainclouds. The towns and villages looked drab without a merciful Australian sun to smile on them, the roads were muddy, the rivers dark with factory refuse.

Three days after their departure from London, the lakes came into view and the rainclouds dispersed. Chester gave a screech of delight and dove at a flock of sheep on a hillside.

“No, you nasty thief, don’t!” Stuart screamed and ineffectually threw his weight against the straps of the carrying-harness.

Chester landed at the mouth of a cave, a dead ram in his claws. “What? I’m no thief.”

“You just stole that sheep!”

“I didn’t. It was marked for the taking. I did sign for it,” the dragon said, piqued.

“Sign? You mean those three scratches you left in the fence post? Are you trying to play me? I will report this!”

“I should like to see you try,” Chester rumbled and disappeared into the cave, leaving a trail of sheep’s blood.

Stuart looked around indignantly, but save for the flock once again grazing peacefully, the hillside was deserted, and no alarm had been raised in the village nestling in the vale.

It was a steep, rocky climb down into the main chamber of the cavern. Chester had accomplished it with two practised hops, but Stuart took a while longer, clambering over boulders his own height scattered about like a child’s marbles.

“What do you mean, you signed for it?” he snapped when he had arrived at the bottom of the climb.

“Why, I made my mark. Every dragon’s got one, since we can’t sign them cheque books. They are kept in a big old book in London, all official, and any beast forging them can be brought before a court. Very cleverly done. It was Temeraire’s notion. Real shame he no longer wanted us to vote for him. He’s gone back to the Corps! … Well, some of us can never have enough fighting, I suppose. Perscitia’s still there though. — Here we are! This is home,” Chester said, preening.

“Charming,” Stuart croaked, trying to stifle a cough as he looked around the raw and forbidding rock walls. Outside the circle of light filtering in from the cave’s mouth, his voice echoed away into dank darkness.

Chester was already clearing a spot of the floor with sweeps of his tail. “Nicest cave in a hundred miles if y'ask me,” he muttered to himself. “Shame nobody keeps it in better nick these days.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, well, a dragon’s got to do something with his life. Earn his keep.”

“But... must you?” Stuart asked, blowing his nose. There was no denying it, three days’ flying in the English rain had paid off in a cold. “Would you not be more comfortable in the breeding grounds?”

“The breeding grounds? Pah. Only those too old to chew their food stay there nowadays. No. I do my work, and when I walk into a bank and say I’d please like ‘em to acquaint me with the state of me account, they are as nice as kiss-my-hand… and nothing compares to hearing those numbers, I tell you!”

Stuart struggled to imagine the scene, but he did not interrupt.

“Of course the old dragons will tell you it used to be much better in their day, and that everyone had the most splendid hoards and all, but that’s all stuff,” Chester went on. “In the old days, we were mostly hungry and cold. You could snatch a sheep every now and then, but then the people from the villages would come up and shoot at you or smoke out your cave… my poor dam had burns down one side of her body and was stone-deaf in one ear, bless her wings.”

“But surely this cannot be much better? Having to work like a beast of burden?” Stuart said, pointing to the carrying harness. The straps had rubbed into Chester’s scales and the main buckle had raised a knotted scar between his shoulders.

“Oh, I could pay to have it set to rights,” the dragon shrugged. “If I wanted to. But it would cost me money, and it doesn’t bother me much.” Though he added, quite giving himself the lie: “You wouldn’t mind loosening that buckle a tad, given you’re standing that way?”

Stuart sighed. The leather straps were wet and swollen, hard to work loose. He might as well take the whole thing off and replace it the next morning, once it had dried. Chester looked pleased as Punch with this proposal, so Stuart clambered over his back to take it off. The worn leather could have used a good oiling — presented with anything so shabby, he would have stopped a ground crew’s grog at the very least — but having neglected his pistols back in London, he had no grease to work it with.

Chester stretched out his wings, threw up his head and gave a roar whose booming echo made a few stones roll away from the mouth of the cave, a noise befitting a beast thrice his size, before tailing off into his cackling laugh. “Ah, the olden days,” he muttered and then huddled down to devour his sheep while Stuart raked together a small heap of branches and leaves deposited by the wind. “What are you doing?”

“Lighting a fire, to make this place even more comfortable,” Stuart said, but the irony seemed lost on the feral who instead peered interestedly at the flint and striker Stuart had, by fortunate force of habit, kept in his flying coat’s pocket. “Was it worth it, Chester? Giving up your freedom, for money?”

The dragon started away from the flurry of sparks, and then cocked his head sideways. “Why, you must be daft or rich, to ask that question. Money’s a splendid thing to have. Money means freedom!”

“Does it,” Stuart said, keeping his eyes down on the kindling flame.

“You’re an odd fellow,” Chester remarked, turning his attention back to the sheep. He tore off a leg. “Want some? … Don’t worry, doesn’t mean I mean to keep you. Why, that would be funny, one of you people following me round, telling me what I can and can't do…” And he was cackling again.

“Funny indeed,” Stuart muttered, not sure whether to feel amused or touched by this naiveté. To the feral, an offering of food seemed to have the meaning of proposing a bond, but none of the harnessings he had witnessed had concluded without good strong chains and a hood. No aviator in the right mind would accept an assignment to Australia, and then let the only prize worth the banishment flap away into the sky.

But he did not want to argue, and took the bloodied shank anyways. He was wretchedly hungry.

\- -

Stuart asked to be set down at Strathmashie, even if it meant walking the last few miles to Laggan Covert with a twang of bad conscience at the memory of Chester’s drooping wings: the small dragon had likely expected a free dinner at the covert. But the rational part of his mind was glad of the decision. A gregarious feral batting him on the back and wishing him jolly good luck, as Chester had done, would hardly have drawn respect from his fellow aviators.

The old military road with its withered Roman milestones wound away through hills overgrown with heather and fern and occasional stands of coniferous trees. Stuart had a hazy recollection of one of his tutors droning on about the Roman conquest of Britain, the legions and their dragons marching into every corner of the country save some obscure Scottish islands and the most forbidding mountain ranges of Wales whose tribes had tamed their own dragons. In the sweltering heat of his Sydney schoolroom, classical history had seemed as useful as a guide to the moon, and somehow, his nervous young teacher had contrived to make it all even more crushingly dull. Knocking over the inkwell had not induced him to curtail the lesson, though Stuart remembered, with a certain fondness, the effect of the large huntsman spider he had introduced into one of the rolled-up maps, sending the man screaming onto a chair as soon as he unrolled it. Emperor Claudius and the loathsome Latin declination tables had not been mentioned again, and the looby had handed in his resignation a few days later.

The covert was situated in a medieval caste. The brutish towers and battlements with their snapping flags would have done Ivanhoe proud, but Stuart felt neither pleased nor awed, only stiff and fatigued when he presented himself at the gatehouse and was led into a dusty wood-panelled watchroom where a confused sergeant leafed through his dispatches and found no mention of a Lieutenant Rankin assigned to Veloxia.

“What ridiculous imposter,” Stuart snarled in growing exasperation, “do you suppose would travel all the way to this crumbling pile just for the honour of cooling his heels at your door? Send word to Captain Lowe, at once, and let us be done!”

“He is out at drills,” the man protested.

“Then throw out a signal! Heavens, I haven’t got all day." Much as he hated it, he had to drop his uncle’s name again. But from there, things proceeded remarkably smoothly: a runner was dispatched to the training grounds and the quartermaster sent for, to assign him a berth.

When he pushed open the door of the room indicated him, he was shocked to find not one, but four bunks lining the walls, with only the one nearest the window still untouched, folded blankets and a straw-stuffed pillow piled up at the foot. The rest of the dormitory showed every sign of inhabitation: needles and playing cards left by the small window, socks laid out to dry, a pile of letters and a bottle shoved under a pillow, a half-dismantled carabiner belt on the bed nearest him. Opening the creaking cabinet on the wall, he found the shelves crowded with motley belongings. As a matter of principle, he cleared one to stow his own goggles, gloves and books, a small pile of linen and the neatly folded green dress coat, in deepening dismay. He had never shared quarters in the Sydney barracks and, barring action, had always enjoyed the privacy and comfort of his own room at his father’s house.

A knock on the door startled him. It was Ensign Gordon from Veloxia’s crew. “Drill until dinner-time, sir, order from Captain Lowe,” the boy piped. “He says you can watch for today. The best view is from the tower. I can show you the way.”

“Very well,” Stuart sighed. He was hungry, but he would have to see about that later. He hadn’t the faintest notion where the kitchens were to be found, nor what meal times they kept here.

The latest shower had left puddles on the worn flagstones atop the northern tower, and the battlements were tall enough that his little guide had to scale one of the rusting cannons to peer over them. In the valley below, the training grounds stretched away to the shore of the loch, lead-grey under an overcast sky.

Four dragons were presently engaged in drills. Stuart spotted Veloxia’s shape near the rear of the formation, alongside two larger middleweights and one beast barely above courier-class. He watched them wheel around in beautiful order, when suddenly, a fifth dragon descended, jet-black and slender with shreds of low cloud eddying off the tips of his wings as if he had torn the sky. Stuart held his breath, involuntarily.

There were no heavyweights in the colony. Even if the admiralty had seen fit to waste one on so remote an assignment, Caesar would never have tolerated being outclassed. Of course Stuart had heard the stories told. But to behold one in the flesh, circling overhead like a majestic ship seen from the bottom of a deep, deep sea, was a different matter. Next to this beast, Caesar was a mule next to a thoroughbred.

The boy, still perched atop the cannon, sighed appreciatively. “That’s Temeraire, sir. He’s a Celestial, a Chinese breed, sir, the very best of them!”

Stuart shot him an ungracious look: he had never before seen this much enthusiasm in Ensign Gordon, and witnessing it, he felt rather ashamed of his own bout of blind admiration. “It is hardly your place to pass such judgement.”

A cacophony of explosions interrupted him, and he looked around to see a line of smoke drifting from the shore of the lake. A battery of artillery had been fired off in a regularly spaced line — straight into the ranks of the dragons. He drew a sharp breath, even as a second volley was fired and he recognized them as harmless signal-flares, hardly dangerous to a dragon unless they hit around the face.

“So this is what we came all this way for? A little fireworks display, and they call it rocket training?” he asked, striving for a mocking tone even as he grasped the devilish scheme. If the dragons learned to fly their patterns between deadlier missiles than flares, they could lure enemy beasts into a deadly trap. The straight line of the firing formed aerial corridors the beasts could exploit to advantage, while untrained pursuers would be torn to shreds — though it was perfectly clear that in the chaos of actual battle, the danger to their own ranks would be real, and the most stringent discipline required.

Gordon did not answer, staring, and the next moment, Stuart saw it too: Another volley had been fired, and all of a sudden, Veloxia had broken the ranks. She spiralled away shrieking and plummeted down at the hillside, breaking off an avalanche of rocks and clawing at the ground before she jumped up again like a maddened colt. He could well imagine the crew’s distress trying to hold on to her, and winced as she threw herself into another headlong dive, bearing down at the shore of the lake to land in a spray of pebbles and mud. There was no telling whether she had been struck by a flare, but even if she had not hurt herself in the air, she was bound to have done so now.

The other beasts had completed their pass and the signals snapped out familiar orders: _formation stay together_ , and _down behind wing-dragon_ , the black heavyweight rounding up the smaller beasts and guiding them down like a shepherd his flock. But Stuart had no eye for it, already running down the stairs, with only the barest glance over his shoulder to snap at the boy: “Fetch some men!”

\- -

A sad scene greeted him at the shore. Veloxia was small for a Reaper, but in an uncontrolled tumble, still brought eight tons crashing down on the sand. Captain Lowe had unlatched his straps, perhaps in some desperate attempt to reach up and reign her in, and as a result been flung a good way off. He lay crumpled and unmoving. Her lieutenant, Dobson, looked uninjured save for a trickle of blood from his forehead, but he only stood staring at the large main buckle gathering the straps about her chest: bent entirely out of shape, the rigging all in disarray. The rest of the crew were clambering off in various states of dumbfounded wreckage, getting in each other’s way.

“Let us have some order here!” Stuart shouted. “You there, Dunne, Pilkington, cut away that strap! Hallam, Ricketts, see to the Captain. — Dobson, can I trouble you to make an account of the men?”

They stared at him confused as if he were some apparition, and then obeyed by reflex. The other dragons had landed now and there was a fast-gathering crowd, more hands than required to take off the tangled harness, more eyes than he would have liked staring at him, but he told himself to ignore them. Gordon came panting up, followed, at some distance, by a few harnessmen and another gentleman who he hoped might be a dragon-surgeon.

Stuart set off towards them when a hand bluntly caught his arm. He startled and he turned, irate at this infraction, and met the face of one of the captains.

“Who the hell are you?” the man asked. His face was barely visible between cap and goggles and a muffling scarf, but his voice was open, hostile suspicion.

“Veloxia's first officer,” he snapped, jerking his arm free, but the man barred his way.

“What is your name?”

“Rankin, sir,” he said, standing up straight to salute formally. “And now, if you will excuse me, I have work to do.” He turned back to Veloxia.

“No injuries so far as I can find,” the gentleman — indeed one of the surgeons, thanks heaven — reported, “though I need to have a look at her in better light.”

“We can take her back to the covert,” a deep, musical voice suggested above them, and Stuart looked up into the face of the black heavyweight. “She oughtn’t fly. I am sure I can carry her — may we, Horatio?” He craned his neck down at the unfriendly captain who still stood two steps behind Stuart.

“Nonsense! We will have no such coddling. Poor behaviour does not deserve rewards. — Captain, pray restrain your beast,” Stuart snorted and turned back to the surgeon who was still prodding Veloxia’s sides and unfolding her wings to feel the digits and joints. Her wiry frame trembled all over, but her eyes were huge and gleaming, fixed on the spot where a few of the crew members had crowded around Lowe. “Can she fly?”

“I must advise against it, sir.”

Stuart sighed. “Very well. — Now up with you, Veloxia! This is quite below the mark.”

“Henry!” she piped, without shifting her eyes. “Henry! Oh, answer me! Are you hurt?”

Her captain was just being cautiously lifted onto a makeshift stretcher devised from poles and harness-straps. Seeing it, she made an odd keening noise and seemed to fall in on herself.

“Now listen here,” Stuart said, stepping closer and striving for a conciliatory tone. He could still feel many eyes upon him, worst of all the penetrating blue of the Celestial’s gaze, and if there was one thing he disliked most intensely, it was making a scene. “He is breathing, he has only been knocked about too roughly by that mad start of yours. They are taking him to the surgeons who will patch him up in no time at all. Until then, it is no use to anyone to have you sitting here. If you don’t want to fly, we can walk back to the covert, and I will make sure you can see Captain Lowe as soon as he is in a state to receive you.”

She saw reason at last. Stuart put up his chin and tried to recover some form of dignity as they trooped off, Veloxia limping ahead and her dazed and confused crew behind. From the corner of his eye, he noticed the black heavyweight lowering his head to his handler. “Did he say his name was Rankin?” he whispered, perfectly audible in a beast that must be nearing twenty tons. “But she’s so scared, and oh — oh, he’ll only make her worse! I did tell you about what Rankin did to poor Levitas, didn’t I?”

“Yes, Temeraire,” his captain hissed, not bothering to keep his voice down either as he stroked the beast’s neck, “but it looks like there isn’t a blessed thing in the world I can do about it.”

\- -

“Well, well, Rankin, and how the tables turn,” Captain Lowe said, raising a bandaged head from the pillows of the sick-bay. His leg was in worse shape, pulled and splinted. “Now who is walking fifty yards, I hear you ask.”

“I am glad to see you on the way to recovery, sir,” Stuart said, formally.

Lowe snorted and pointed at his leg. “On the way to recovery? They say I’ve broken it in three places, and wouldn’t wager on my keeping it.” His tone was cheerful, despite the considerable pain he must be suffering: the bottle of spirits on the table perhaps part of the answer, though his voice was not in the least slurred. Lowe possessed an Australian's tolerance for liquor. “You haven’t kept your crutches, have you?”

Stuart shook his head. He had thrown the mark of his humiliating period of invalidity into the sea just after they had rounded the Cape.

“Oh, never mind. One of the carpenters will be able to knock something together, and for the present I’m told not to stir anyhow. Come here. I hear you and Dobson had a disagreement.”

“Sir, I was merely—” Stuart began, calmly furious at the thought of the sidelined lieutenant’s bleating to Lowe while he had been busy trying to knock the crew back into shape and to shorten the defaulters' list. But the captain waved him off.

“Don’t worry, I have not forgotten about your lord uncle,” he said, laconically. “But I cannot help wondering at your zeal, after today’s sad incident.”

Stuart crossed his arms. “I see no reason to jump dragon.”

Captain Lowe sighed. “What if I told you her behaviour is beyond remedy?”

“With all respect, sir, I would point out that firm rules will improve any beast’s discipline.”

“Indeed,” Lowe muttered. “Rules. — Well, sit, if you please.”

Stuart pulled over a chair and seated himself, hat in hands on his lap.

“You see,” Lowe began again, “Velly was lightning-struck at a young age, out in the desert, and she's been mortally scared of bright flashes and thunder ever since. As you might recall, we were on courier duty for most of the wars, what with those Chinese crackers and flares the natives would aim at us… She can bear a little rifle-shot as you have cause to know, even bombs dropped a fair distance before they go off, but nothing like those damned new rockets exploding right in the poor dear’s face… Now in my defence, I did try to tell the commander not to send us. But he wouldn’t hear of it, seeing as he seemed in a most wretched hurry, and she was the only one small enough to fit aboard the _Vincent_. So you see, lieutenant, my old girl’s a good soul, but no fighting dragon of Caesar’s class. Perhaps knowing as much, you will want to… reconsider.”

Of course, Stuart thought, a sinking feeling spreading in his chest. His father had been anxious to send him before another could carry away the prize his uncle had offered. For that, he had put him on a third-rate, nay dangerous, dragon.

Something in him wanted to give up, to despair. But he remembered the Celestial captain’s scornful face, _not a thing in the world I can do about it_ , and anger seized him afresh. No, he would not give that satisfaction, not now. He rose and straightened his shoulders. “Indeed I do not, sir. I quite welcome a challenge.”


	6. Manoeuvres

The next morning, Stuart rose at first light and crept out past his still-sleeping roommates. A purple mist shrouded the woods at the shore of Loch Laggan, the peaks of the Cairngorms glowing a delicate pink shot with gold where the rising sun touched them, but he scarcely gave them a look.

Rules were important, his father had always said so. An action must trigger a response, a dragon’s greedy mind eminently suitable to making the calculation. Veloxia had been allowed to fall into a bad habit, that was all, and it was up to him to change it. He could succeed and stay in the service, or fail and be damned, simple as that. He briefly considered what Captain Rankin would do, in his place, but that was little use. For all the talk of discipline and a firm hand, Stuart knew his father would wheedle and cajole, threaten and bargain, until Caesar and he had reached an agreement that suited both parties. It would hardly answer now, with Veloxia.

The dragons’ summer quarters consisted of clearings in the forest of Scots pine. The ground was springy with moss and heather and surely perfectly comfortable to sleep upon, but in a show of the fantastic luxury his father had often condemned as corrupting the Corps’ heartland, there were a number of roofed, heatable platforms built of the local grey granite. He noticed one of these occupied by the black heavyweight who had led the drill the previous day, Temeraire. The dragon lay reclining, but the tip of his tail lashed the ground suggesting he was awake, and walking past, Stuart caught the dragon’s voice, indistinct in its low resonance, and a man answering him.

“I know… I am sorry… but I am here now, am I not? I thought we might go flying and try— what? Really? But Temeraire, it is not six o’clock…” There was a deep sigh. “Oh, very well, if you insist… Where do you have the wretched thing?”

The dragon rose to his haunches, yawned and arched a long, slender back before settling into a posture of attentive grace, a ruff pricked up at the back of his head. Twenty tons without the shadow of a doubt, Stuart thought, and as nimble as a feather.

Temeraire’s companion climbed back up to the platform, a large book clamped under his arm, and seated himself in the waiting claw. The beast lowered his head eagerly to nose at the tome. “Chapter six, if you recall,” he said.

“Yes, yes… _Of the component Parts of the Price of Commodities_ … Must we, really? See, I’ve brought my rifle. If we fly downriver, I daresay we might find a nice tender stag for your breakfast.”

But the dragon’s intent gaze at the book was answer enough, even to Stuart on the trail between the clearings.

“Fine!” The man flicked over a page, cleared his throat and began to read, in rather a disinterested drone: “ _The price of flax resolves itself into the same three parts as that of corn…_ ”

“Horatio, I think there is someone there,” the dragon interrupted.

“Well, Temeraire, it will be some crewman or herdsmaster. — Now do you want me to read to you or not?”

Stuart quickly walked on.

\- -

Veloxia was a less impressive sight, a graceless heap of striped muddy-yellow, muttering in her sleep. Stuart did not wish to make a racket and alert the beasts in the neighbouring clearings, least of all the Celestial, so he walked closer and stamped a hobnailed boot on the claw sprawled out nearest him. It was less than a forceful tap through a dragon’s thick skin, he knew, but she startled and opened her eyes. “Henry?” she demanded, lurching to her feet. “Oh,” she said, seeing him.

“Captain Lowe is still asleep as he ought to be,” Stuart told her. “I’ve come to discuss today’s manoeuvres. There must be no repetition of yesterday’s bad comportment, Veloxia, or I will need to cut your rations. Think of the shame you are bringing on all the Australian division.”

She let her head hang. “But I do not like to fight like that. Temeraire doesn’t, either. He says it is cowardly to make other dragons fly into the rockets. And the noise of them scares me.”

Stuart crossed his arms. “I saw no rockets, but harmless signal-flares. You are a fighting-dragon of the Corps, Veloxia. You must do your duty. Now let us go up and run through the pattern, and once you have done, you may have your breakfast.”

She made a few feeble noises of protest, but he ignored her and climbed up to latch onto the simple leather collar around her neck, the rest of the mended harness still heaped up under oilskins to the side of the clearing where the workmen had left it. He needed to get a better measure of her. Lowe had been overindulgent during the shipboard passage, only rarely taking his dragon and crew through drills in favour of long leisurely, useless flights across the water whenever Veloxia had not been drowsing or stuffing her gullet with fish. Changing tack would make him even less popular with dragon and crew, Stuart knew, but there was no way around it.

He dug his heel into her side. “Come on, Veloxia, up we go.”

She jerked and took a few teetering steps, but then shook out her wings. There was the familiar rush of air, the expected leap of the stomach, and Stuart closed his eyes as the ground fell away below them. It was not true acrophobia, he knew, not true air-sickness, no; only the healthy response to being flung aloft on the back of a primeval beast, with only a thin glaze of rigging thrown over scales and horns and finger-long teeth, the response any sane person ought to have, had they not been brought a-dragonback by the age of six or seven as the common cadets were.

The vertigo always passed, though sometimes it took longer, and today it took unseemly long, likely due to the worn state of his nerves. The first time he had been aloft on Caesar, Stuart had clung with his eyes shut and his head spinning madly out of control until he had been sick all over himself, to the mirth of the dragon and crew, and fared little better the next few days until one of the experienced hands had taken pity and told him to train his eyes on the distant and constant horizon until his senses righted themselves. So now he once again made a conscious effort, crouching down with both hands on the collar, and willed his mind to becalm itself while Veloxia flew a tight curve and out over the loch.

\- -

His expectations of the food had been low, but the real thing still managed to disappoint: a strange stew of potatoes, swede and lard cooked to a muddy-brown mass with too little salt, called stovies. Stuart was hungry enough to put it all away regardless, but he could not help remembering, with a certain nostalgia, the Chinese cookshops in Sydney harbour where a penny would have gotten him something infinitesimally better. Captain Rankin had tried to ban the officers from frequenting them, but the rule had been roundly ignored, and Stuart himself had never understood how his loyalty to king and flag should suffer by merely eating foreign.

Veloxia went hungry, by his strict orders: The day had been an embarrassing disappointment. Despite a flawless practice run at dawn, she had gone into wild capers as soon as the practice flares were fired, and splashed down into the lake. The softer landing had prevented another round of broken limbs, but they had all gone away drenched and shamefaced. The incident had thrown the rest of the formation into disarray, provoking the other dragons to mutter and their crews to jeer, unchecked by their captains. Veloxia had paddled back to the shore, but then not been persuaded to rise again for the best part of an hour, not for all the threats Stuart could think of. But he was not prepared to hide in shame. He knew he must take his place now, if ever.

So after dinner, he changed into his last clean shirt and his second-best coat, went to the officers’ mess and took a seat at an empty table. He recognized a handful of officers from Orion, the Pecheur at the rear of Temeraire’s formation, though he knew no names and had nobody to make him introductions. Lieutenant Dobson at the other end of the room very pointedly gave him his back.

He had just taken his first sip from a glass of wine, sour and vastly inferior to the one produced in Australia, when the mess door was thrown open and with an unpleasant start, Stuart saw Temeraire’s unfriendly captain. They had not spoken again after Lowe’s injury, and today, Captain Laurence had merely sent his lieutenant to inquire after the casualties of the most recent plummet; an older, formal man called Ingram who had one of the bunks in Stuart’s dormitory. For all this standing on rank and ceremony, Captain Laurence had not even bothered to change out of his wet flying-coat now, a strange make of black leather with frayed blue silk padding at the shoulders. The embossed Chinese decorations on the sleeves and lapel did not escape Stuart’s attention, for all the mud crusting them, and he could not suppress a disdainful snort. He had never quite believed his father’s tales of Admiral Laurence’s shocking comportment and poor taste, but evidently, the whole tribe enjoyed styling themselves in the manner of oriental princes.

“Cats-and-dogs, I tell you! But we caught two stags,” Captain Laurence called out to his fellows, in a loud and cheerful voice carrying over the general din, and held up two gloved and bloodied fingers for confirmation, “and some manner of fowl for tomorrow’s roast! Simpkins says it will be splendid… You must all come to dine!”

Two companions had entered behind him, one Lieutenant Ingram and the second a young mulatto girl wearing a midwingman’s uniform. Captain Laurence turned to address them and, in doing so, caught sight of Stuart.

He paused to stare straight at him with unabashed rudeness, a streak of his quarry’s blood standing out on one cheek where he had carelessly touched it. The next moment, he had crossed the room and flung himself into the free chair at Stuart’s table, pulling off a grimy leather glove to proffer his hand with an ironic smile.

“Rankin, was it? Begging your pardon, I neglected to introduce myself earlier. Captain Horatio Laurence of Temeraire.”

Stuart straightened his shoulders in a formal salute. “Lieutenant Stuart Rankin of Veloxia, at your service.”

Captain Laurence dropped his hand to the table with a shrug. “Right. Let me come straight to the point, then. I will have no repetition of today’s shameful behaviour towards your beast.”

Stuart blinked. “Sir, I do not see how Veloxia’s handling is any of your business.”

Captain Laurence still smiled, but an angry gleam hat appeared in his eyes.“Any of my business? Of course it is my business if an officer — a first lieutenant at that — begins talking of shame and punishment, upsetting all the dragons and causing unrest! Do you have any notion what you will do to the morale of the formation?”

Stuart only stared at him, baffled that a trained aviator presumed to lecture another on the management of a dragon, especially considering Horatio Laurence was by no means a veteran. He looked not twenty-five. Likely neither skill nor brilliance had landed him his command, Stuart thought, what with a famous name and an admiral‘s protection, added to which he was very good-looking, in that despicable straightforward angelic blue-eyed fashion. A man like that did not even need his father‘s influence. A man like that would be noticed, mentioned in the reports and picked for promotion even when others had had a greater part of the action. A man like that never had to struggle to win people’s hearts. Had he been flawed in some way, bad teeth or a crooked nose or a disfiguring scar, Stuart might have accorded him a grudging respect for an early rise that must have been earned by merit. This way, however, he was hardly worth noticing.

So he settled back in his chair, took another sip of the terrible wine and kept silent.

“I do not know what backwards notions of dragon-handling you’ve been raised to,” Captain Laurence rode on, "but by God you are a part of Temeraire’s formation now. We don’t trample all over our dragons and make them unsure of their ground. I expect each and every one of you to be able to act independently, _ex formatio_ , as well as within, as any fighting force of worth ought to, and fear is a poor guide to that. So in short, if there is any repetition of today’s ill-informed attempt at intimidation, I will take the matter up with the admiral.”

Stuart glanced over the rim of his glass, quietly amazed. The man clearly had no grasp on his beast at all, if he thought dragons such delicate flowers as to be broken by the kind of short talking-to he had used on Veloxia. “Sir, I do believe there is something to be said for setting one’s own house in order,” he said.

“What?” Captain Laurence narrowed his eyes.

Stuart shrugged. “But then, I cannot hold myself up as an expert on the price of flax.” He rose, put the glass down and saluted again. “Good evening.”

\- -

Captain Rankin had been right about the Laurences after all, and somehow, this realization restored Stuart to a more general faith. Climbing the winding stairs to the dormitory, he felt more energetic than he had done in weeks. A weak cowardice to forsake one’s own ways, one’s own blood — he would succeed with Veloxia, he would prove his worth, and he finally remembered the way to do it.

The room was empty when he entered. He strode to the wardrobe and threw open the doors, pushed aside some of the clutter one of his messmates had stubbornly reinstalled on his shelf, and drew out the antique leather-bound book his father had given him upon his departure: _De domitando draconum,_ a Tudor manual of dragon-rearing, well-worn from generations of use.

He had paged through it before, but never in earnest. The book was written in a dense, antiquated language liberally scattered with Latin, treated a dragon’s absolute obedience as axiomatic while Caesar had only ever been wilful and obstinate, and described such vapid exercises as dragon-training for jousting or the capturing of manticores, advice which hardly leant itself to ending a plague of bunyips. However, something told him the answers he needed now were hidden somewhere on those yellowed pages.

He had just worked his way through an opening chapter of admonishments — _the Authority of the Dragon-Master resteth upon fear and trembling as that of the parent of an Obedient childe. Behold: Rules are not a Terror to good conduct but to Bad_ — when Lieutenant Garrick of Felicitas stamped in.

“You cannae’ve asked before throwing me things all ahoo, Johnny-come-lately from Australia?” he growled, having opened the closet to discover the changed state of affairs.

“Each of us has a shelf,” Stuart said without raising his eyes from the book, “and this particular one appears to be mine.”

“It was mine yesterday, Rankin, and I cannae recall yer asking me for it!” Garrick spat and strode up to him, his face reddened and his eyes ablaze.

Stuart shut the book. “Look, do we really need to—”

Garrick shook a fist in his face. “Shut yer mouth and ask me, or come answerin’ like a man!”

Stuart sighed and put the book aside. He was well used to being taken for an easy target, the disadvantage of a slender build, washed hands and clean clothes. The man smelled of spirits, had come looking for trouble, and did not like playing fair, his first blow directed at Stuart’s head before he had even risen to his feet. He dodged by instinct and let himself drop back onto the cot, and the momentum of his own strike almost toppled Garrick over. Stuart kicked his feet away from under him and Garrick went down in an undignified tumble, but he reared again in a proper fury, seized Stuart by the collar and swung his fist. Stuart grasped his arm with both hands to twist aside and they came down together grappling, the sharp rip of linen — there went his last clean shirt — and a hand seizing him by the hair to grind his head down onto the ancient floor boards until he could taste blood in his mouth. He groped blindly, pushing both thumbs into Garrick's eyes and a knee into the man’s groin, and felt the air leave his opponent’s lungs with a gasp, the grip suddenly loose. He rolled away sideways and up, only a quick blow away from sending Garrick into his well-deserved slumber, when he found himself grasped by the shoulder and flung backwards.

“Gentlemen, have you taken leave of your senses? Stop this brawling, at once!”

Stuart knelt, panting, and swept his hair out of his forehead to look into the face of the intruder who had now interposed himself between him and Garrick: Lieutenant Ingram of Temeraire.

“That… feckin' son of an Australian whore…” Garrick gasped, struggling to his feet. “Someone’s got to teach him… some manners…”

Stuart would have thrown himself at him right again, but Ingram caught him with a steady restraining grip. “Easy there,” he said. “Quit the blubber, Garry. I’m afraid you’re outmatched. You should have seen him cut down Captain Laurence just now.”

“I got no complaints o’Laurence,” Garrick hissed, “but this… piece of-”

“Of course you don’t,” Ingram said, levelly. “You’re not taking orders from a greenhorn who might put some connection into play and see you broken the service if you say so much as boo… No, Garrick, say sorry and shake his hand, and then to bed with you, here’s a good fellow.”

Under Ingram’s stern gaze, Garrick gave Stuart’s hand a brief, brutish squeeze and muttered something incomprehensible, as likely to be an oath as an apology, but Stuart paid it little mind: he was too perplexed at the unexpected aid. He glanced over at Ingram, but Temeraire’s premier had settled himself on his own cot as if nothing had happened and drawn out a pencil and a neat little book embossed _Advice and Queries_. What an odd fellow, Stuart thought. One thing was for certain, however, a heartening thought to be sure: Captain Laurence, for all his bluster, had enemies.

\- -

At dawn, he found Veloxia slumbering replete, the chewed half of a stag at the edge of her clearing with a thin layer of grass and moss scraped over it as if she had meant to save it for later.

“What is the meaning of this?” he snapped once he had roused her with a sharp blow.

She put back her wings. “I caught it,” she said, defiantly.

“Did you indeed?” Stuart pulled away some of the coverings and snorted. “You went hunting with a rifle, Veloxia?” He pointed at the bullet-hole in the deer’s rump.

“I caught it,” she repeated, her voice thinning under his glare.

“Very well,” he snapped. “A liar of a dragon — you should be ashamed of yourself. Veloxia, under such circumstances, I am afraid I cannot let you see your Captain.”

Her eyes widened. “What? Whyever not?”

“Because he is already much grieved at your failures, and will be even more so at this treachery! We will now go through that simplest of runs a final time, and if you make a mess of it again today, I swear I will —”

She sat back. “No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“No,” Veloxia repeated, with greater vehemence. “You are not my captain. And you are lying about Henry.”

Stuart drew a sharp breath. “I am your assigned first lieutenant and Captain Lowe’s substitute for the period of his recuperation, and if you refuse to follow my orders, I can report you for mutiny and petulance.”

Veloxia had hunched herself small now, trembling, but she held her head up. “I will not have you,” she proclaimed. “Temeraire says it is my right to reject you.”

Stuart took a deep breath, trying to fight back the rising ire. “And he has taught you to parrot this mutinous little speech? Veloxia, the rules are simple. If you refuse to follow orders, you must go to the breeding grounds, and you cannot keep your captain or crew.” He shrugged and turned away. “I will go tell the men they are dismissed.”

“Wait! No! Temeraire says —”

Stuart wheeled around again. “I do not give a pin for what Temeraire says! Now either you take me up and go through those passes and look tolerably sharp at it, or you will have seen the last of your crew.”

Reapers were a companionable breed, and this last argument worked a treat — Stuart rather wondered at himself for only having hit upon it now. He cast a dark glance at the stag’s carcass as he scaled her back, reminding himself that the danger was not past, not at all. His father had been right in every last aspect. Temeraire’s ideas were like poison.

\- -

“Put it there. — Yes, thank you, that will be all.”

Captain Horatio Laurence eyed the parcel the servant-girl had carried in and deposited on his desk. He let himself drop into the chair, pulled off his flying gloves and stretched his legs, before taking up the pen knife to cut the knotted strings and pull aside the tarpaulin wrappings. A magnificent collar of laurels in gold thread on a background of bottle-green winked up at him, and a sealed letter fell into his lap.

He unfolded it. Admiral Laurence’s neat hand, warm wishes for his health and progress, and an enclosed sheet for Temeraire. His part finished:

_It has been almost a month since your last letter. I take it you are much occupied by your Duties. How does Temeraire? He insisted on having this coat made for you as a mark of his esteem and regard. (He would Forever make a dressing-doll of me, so pray let me congratulate you on this shifting of his attentions.) I have taken the liberty of settling your Arrears, though I wish you would send word in advance of interest next time, and hope you will not think me Overbearing if I should ask for a copy of your expense-sheet ahead of another advance._

Horatio put the letter down. The gentle reproof bit more than it ought to, in conjunction with this splendid but useless gift. Not three months ago he had been paraded around his parents’ friends and comrades on the occasion of his making post, a London room crammed full of the Corps’ most famous and decorated veterans, in his ordinary serving-coat, with only the new double bars pinned on, and nobody had objected in the slightest. He had no use for a dress coat in the latest fashion. If anything, he could have done with a new sword, the old one hopelessly dulled and scratched with use. But reading the letter, he got quite the picture of himself drinking and dicing all day.

He pushed himself up to pace his room: five long steps from the old desk to the monstrous medieval canopied bed, another six, turning two points aft of the port beam, to a carved fireplace — the captain’s privilege of space, his due. He still felt rather crushed by it, having, for most of his life, slept huddled against Iskierka’s side in the company of his fellows with nothing but the sky above and the steady hiss of steam from the dragon’s spikes at his back.

He glanced back at the letter. His father had been in the service himself. Did he not remember how quickly it all stacked up? Mess bills and laundry fares, wine for the officers’ table, powder and shot to be paid out of pocket if one cared to practise with more than potato-sacks for bombs, an extra head of cattle for Temeraire on Sundays, new shoes and clothing for the two orphan runners without sponsors — the ones Admiral Laurence had asked him to take on, if one cared to be particular — and, admittedly, one or two vices of his own, cheap in the grand scheme of things. No use applying to his mother, either: in this singular aspect, Admiral Roland had turned out quite the model wife, relinquishing control of the purse strings with a bare shrug of the shoulders and the proclamation that, having lost a good score of years fighting the admiralty board over rotten consignments, she was perfectly happy to have Laurence deal with the cursed tribe of bankers and lawyers and scroungers — scroungers, in this case, including him.

But then, he was in arrears, arrears not as easily settled as signing a cheque. Well, he thought, heading back to the desk, he would see to it right away. He drew out a sheet of paper, smoothened it and took up a pen.

_Sir,_  
_I thank you most Heartily for your kind Consideration._

Horatio paused, and sighed, unsure how to continue. He really was no hand with a pen. He preferred to have deeds speaking for him, not words, but the current performance of the formation really wasn’t anything to write home about.

There was a knock on the door.

“Enter,” he called, expecting Simpkins, the manservant he shared with two other captains whom he had summoned to see to the fireplace. But it was Lieutenant Ingram.

“Pardon for disturbing you, Captain, but Admiral Portland has returned from Edinburgh. He desires a report on the progress of the formation, and begs to be notified immediately once the dragons are ready be ready to be put into action with the Navy division.”

“Old Portland can beg all he likes,” Horatio muttered, turning back to the page. So the day was unlikely to get much better, and somehow, he would still have to muster enough gaiety to thank Temeraire for the coat. Most likely, the dragon would insist on his wearing it at once. Well, he was used to that at least, from Iskierka.

“I have taken the liberty of preparing a draft,” Ingram said, producing a sheet to put down before him, solicitously.

“Everyone is taking liberties today,” Horatio said, giving it a rough skim before putting it aside. Only a few months ago, his life had been so much easier, when he had been a simple lieutenant with nothing to worry about save the dragon and the grizzly bears and the changeable Mohawks, thousands of miles from London, thousands of miles from political messiness. “Why the heck do we need to do this, Ingram?”

“I haven't the pleasure of understanding —“

“The damned rockets, of course! Why? About as honourable as sneaking up on a sleeping man, don’t you think?”

“Service to the King — the Queen, I mean — service to one’s nation is always honourable, sir,” Ingram said. “Besides, Admiral Portland commands it.”

“Of course,” Horatio sighed. What other answer had he expected, from Ingram. The man would eat his shoes if the rule-book told him so. Well, he himself could see nothing appealing in using dragons to lure their enemies into a trap, without chance of honest combat, proper fighting — what else did one choose the Corps for? From the time he had been a small boy, Temeraire's and Iskierka's stories had had him dreaming of battles and glory and prize-money to make him rich and free. He had always tried his hardest and given his best, but for what? There was peace in the land, and he was writing reports, performing aerial acrobatics for a bunch of stupid sailors, and begging his father for money.

He waved a hand at Ingram who still stood to unmoving attention. “I’ll sign your thing later and see Portland about it, never you fret. Now, if you would care to leave me, I’ve got a letter to write. Tell Temeraire I’ll be a short while. Ask Isabella to see to it he's washed. — Oh, and Ingram, pray read him some more of that blasted economics treatise. We are on chapter seven.”

Ingram drew breath as if he meant to say something more, and Horatio looked up. “What? Come on, look lively, man. Adam Smith awaits.”

Ingram nodded, opened the door, stepped out and halted.

“Lieutenant Rankin,” Horatio heard him say. “Why, have you been waiting here long?”

Horatio would have liked to bury his head in his hands. Try to forget one’s problems for so much as an hour, and the problems came walking up all of their own accord. “Listening at doors, Rankin?” he called, tossing the pen down again. “No, no, do come in. I was just thinking, what a cheery afternoon, what could possibly make it better.”

You had to give it to the man, Horatio thought when the lieutenant entered, Rankin always contrived to look tidy and put-together, even after today’s mad ride on that skittish Reaper he seemed to insist on breaking as if she were a colt. She had flung herself away into the hills, and the search party had discovered her at the shore of Loch Monar, almost forty miles to the north. Rankin had high cheekbones, an aquiline nose and turquoise eyes like a pacific atoll in sunlight, an agreeable face if it weren't forever drawn tight with fury. The man was a puzzle. Handling a timid beast was something any aviator loathed. A dragon refusing to go into engagements would often be retired, and abandoning such a post was no blot on an officer’s record even if he weren't the nephew of an influential Earl, even if he didn't stand to inherit a dragon anyways. So Horatio could not understand why Rankin insisted so stubbornly. Most likely, he was simply one of those arrogant fellows bent on asserting the superiority of their ways no matter what.

“Captain Laurence, I have come to speak to you about Veloxia.”

Horatio leaned back in his chair. “Ah. Well, sorry about that deer, lieutenant, but there was no talking Temeraire out of it… Far be it from me to advise you on setting houses in order, but what the deuce were you thinking, letting the dragon go hungry? It shan’t make her any more biddable.”

Lieutenant Rankin looked taken aback, but he composed himself quickly, straightening up with much the same stiff formality as Ingram had used. “That remains to be seen, sir,” he said, the fine drawing-room vowels dripping scorn. “I have come to ask permission for Veloxia to be released from formation-duty, for a period of four weeks, to go to the hills for training.”

“What?” Horatio exclaimed, rising to his feet. “You think I will let you hare off into the Highlands to ride that poor dragon to foundering and her crew alongside? Away from her poor captain in the sick-bay? Why on earth should I do such a thing?”

Lieutenant Rankin compressed his narrow lips and glared at him, unflinching. “Captain, may I remind you of your own premise that any dragon ought to be able to act independently, _ex formatio?_ It is that which I am proposing, and her courage and spirit only stand to gain. — But yes, to speak frankly, I believe I can make more of her without interference at every juncture.”

Horatio closed a fist behind his back and smiled. “Well, frankness is a fine quality in an officer. — A week, Rankin, you may have one week. Not four, and by the end of it, Veloxia shall decide if she likes a different lieutenant.”

He felt a little ashamed to let the fellow have even this much, and the last condition was risky when he was unsure if Portland, old-fashioned to say the least, would second such a thing. But then, he could not quite ignore the thought of how useful it should be if Veloxia did not go barrelling all through his formation at the impending review.

“Understood, sir,” Stuart Rankin said, levelly. “I shall report back here in a week’s time.”


	7. Mutiny

“A minute and ten! Why so long? Another pass, Veloxia!”

Stuart tucked the watch away, wiped the sweat from his face and turned ahead, grimly. _De domitando draconum_ detailed a method for breaking in wild-caught dragons, by means of fire and smoke and striking terror until the beast bent its neck. He did not have the means of creating quite the required spectacle, in the remote glen, so he had settled for tiring her out, pitting his will against hers. The weather was on his side: After three days of rain and mists dense enough to render flying hazardous, the clouds had shifted and an oppressive July heat descended like a smothering pillow. Veloxia had learned her part by now, a complicated twisting figure, so he made her fly it against the clock while the crew practised loading volleys, without firing — they had run out of powder a day ago.

“I am thirsty,” Veloxia chirped. “May I have a rest?”

“You may not,” Stuart snapped. _Through pain and fear, wilful Instincts come undone. Sinful wyrm’s salvation lieth in Obedience to man._ “We can be at this all day if you don’t manage it quicker! Dobson, another round, if you please!”

He felt her wings tremble with exhaustion as she came back around for another sweep over Loch Monar, a pitiful sight, but he closed his eyes. It was for her own good, _her own good, her own —_

A hand grasped him by the scruff of the neck. “Enough, Rankin,” Lieutenant Dobson growled.

“How dare you!” Stuart began, trying to turn. “Go back to your station and—”

Something cold and sharp was pressed to his throat. He froze.

“Enough!” Dobson snapped. “We’re taking no more orders from you. Come up!”

Stuart was pulled to his feet, his carabiner-strap drawing taut. He stumbled. “You must cut me loose, you fool. Doing this for the first time, are you?” He felt his heart race, with anger, not fear: anger and disgust that this commoner, this imbecile, whom he had allowed back, now dared raise a hand against him.

“Silence!” Dobson roared. “Don’t move! Farlane — unlatch him!”

The midwingman clambered over to undo Stuart’s strap and unhook the sword from his belt, nimbly. Dobson turned him around, the knife still pressed to his neck, and Stuart was staring at all the crew, a blade in every hand, swords and dirks and bayonets, twelve to one.

“Now, Rankin,” Dobson hissed, “the choice is yours. You will swear to go away and forsake the Corps, and never lay a hand on any beast again, and we will set you down. Or we can finish this now and throw you in the lake.”

Stuart looked at them, faces blank with hatred, even little Gordon’s. The blade scored his skin, drawing a warm trickle of blood. “Take that away first,” he snapped.

Dobson lowered it. Stuart raised his right hand, fingers straight, and placed the left over his stuttering heart. “I swear…”

He paused.

“Get on with it, man,” Dobson muttered next to his ear. “We haven’t got all day. I swear upon my honour…”

“I swear, upon my honour—“

Stuart thrust his hand under his coat and pulled out his pistol, cocked it and fired blindly over his shoulder. Not all the powder had been used, of course — he would not be so stupid as that. The recoil nearly threw him off the dragon’s back. Dobson howled and the carabiners jingled as he staggered and fell. No time to look. Stuart crouched down and grasped a hold on the harness. The men were coming for him. No time to reload. He thrust the pistol back into his crossbelt and drew the faithful knife from his boot.

“Veloxia!” he bellowed, “Veloxia, _down at once_ or there will be blood!”

He felt a shudder run through the dragon’s body, a violent trembling ending in a savage hiss, and then, she had whipped her head around, seized him, shaken him left and right, and flung him off her back.

\- -

“Enough!” Horatio called to the signal-ensign and the flags waved the exercise to a close. He leaned over to pat Temeraire’s neck. “Well done!”

Temeraire gave a pleased rumble as he spiralled downwards to land at the shore of Loch Laggan, calling out to his fellows. But Orion, Felicitas and little Albus only waved and darted away in the direction of the feeding pens.

“Oh, I hope they’ll leave some for me,” Temeraire said as he waded into the crystal-clear loch, a treat after the exercise in the sun.

“I am sure they will. Pray set me down there,” Horatio said and pointed at a few boulders in the shallows, reluctantly: he would much rather have joined in the frolics that had already begun at Temeraire’s sides, the runners and midwingmen all suddenly quite incapable of staying latched and sliding down the dragon’s sides into the water. He waved off Lieutenant Ingram when he hurried up to restrain them: they well deserved a break.

The older hands had assembled on the shore well away from the splashing, cleaning rifles or buckles or smoking their pipes. Horatio climbed out of Temeraire’s claw and seated himself on the rock to watch the bathing dragon and the sunlight glittering on the waves. “Enough, Widener,” he called, “keep it down! Mr Dlamini, that shirt is staying on — you are said to be a young lady!”, though he could not wipe a smile off his face. There should be more days like this one.

It had begun with the _Times_ announcing the defeat of a Tory bill to curtail the landholding rights of dragons, putting Temeraire into tearing high spirits, gloating almost. The following drill had progressed swimmingly, Temeraire’s zeal perfectly infectious to his fellow dragons. If they managed the run half as well tomorrow, Horatio thought, even Laetificat’s sharp eyes would not find anything amiss. And maybe Admiral Portland’s report would mention the successful review, and through the usual circuitous channels, it would reach his mother’s ears and then his father’s, and he would not look quite such a scoundrel when next he had to ask for assistance. But above anything else, he felt as though he were finally beginning to get the measure of the dragon, his father’s dragon, for all the frustrating puzzle Temeraire had been to begin with, alternating between smothering care as if Horatio were still a child and an irritating habit of turning simple orders into tedious philosophical arguments, until Horatio longed for Iskierka’s gleeful battle-frenzy with all his heart.

Iskierka had never been much of a formation-flyer, same as himself. _Never mind manoeuvres, always straight at ‘em._ Horatio grinned, trying to imagine how the morning would have gone aboard her: likely, she would have flamed the damnable rockets in a single pass and knocked the other dragons out of the way in search of the enemy, a strategy which made perfect sense for a dragon capable of engulfing the deck of a frigate in fire more quickly than any order might be shouted. Admiral Granby had sometimes reproached him on this count, and he could hear his godfather’s voice even now — _beware of indulging her whims, no good has ever come of it_ — and he thought of them both. He hoped they were happy with their new station, the Dover command.

“Horatio,” Temeraire said next to him, jarring him from his thoughts. “If we are not practising in the afternoon, I do not see why we should not go and see how Rankin is doing.”

“What? But do you not want to eat?” Horatio asked, surprised. “And the letter to father? You wanted to congratulate him on refuting that bill, remember?”

Temeraire’s ruff drooped. “Yes. But Laurence would not be happy if I wrote we had let Rankin leave with Veloxia and not checked to make sure he was treating her well.”

“Indeed,” Horatio sighed, the familiar frustration creeping back up, the sunshine suddenly dulled. “Temeraire, I know the fellow is a scoundrel. But I allowed him a week. I cannot interfere now without offending.”

“He offends everyone all the time,” Temeraire said belligerently, his ruff flaring up. “So I do not see why not. Besides, if _you_ let him have a week, that does not mean I cannot go and speak to Veloxia.”

“Right,” Horatio said, defeated. “But only briefly, if you please. Remember Portland agreed to let her have the choice of lieutenant after they return, so she is sure to be shot of him soon enough, either way.”

Temeraire all but swept them up, suddenly in a great hurry. The younger aviators were still thoroughly drenched, and Horatio would have preferred to establish some order, perhaps leave Ingram and the topmen behind to find some more useful way to spend the next few hours, but he knew better than to make a show of arguing in front of his crew.

At least the trip would afford him a chance of reassuring Captain Lowe about his dragon’s state. The poor fellow had only just been transferred from the sick bay to a room in the old bower where the captains were housed. Horatio had called on him after dinner, the previous evening. It had been a brief and polite interview, but he had gone away with an odd feeling. The man’s leg had been crushed to pieces, but what seemed to hurt him most was his dragon’s absence, as if some far more vital part had been severed. It had unpleasantly recalled his mother’s advice, back in London. _You must be patient. These things take time._ Back then, he had laughed. He did not laugh now.

Temeraire could fly very fast if he pushed himself, and he did so now, to the limits: less than an hour to Loch Monar, the direction Rankin had left upon his departure, grudgingly. Their approach could not be called discrete, with Temeraire’s jet-black hide against a sky nearly clear of cloud, and Horatio would not have wagered much for their chances of escaping discovery, but Rankin, Veloxia and the crew seemed wholly taken up by their practice, whatever it was they were about.

“Can you see the hollow on the hillside there, Temeraire, two points to starboard?” he called. “Pray set down. Let us wait until they land to rest, and then you may go and speak with her.”

Temeraire obeyed reluctantly, and Horatio drew out his glass to watch, in deepening disapproval. Veloxia was plainly exhausted, her wings foundering and her turns slurred, and still they kept flying the same turn, over and over.

“Why doesn’t he realize she needs a rest?” he murmured, and Temeraire growled, low.

“I told you. He is a terrible man, just like Captain Rankin. We should go and stop him!”

“Wait! No, please, Temeraire!” Horatio said, reaching out to put a hand on the harness. “We cannot—“

He broke off, staring, and then hastily brought the glass back to his eye. “Oh, hell… What _are_ they doing?”

\- -

Stuart fell.

He heard his own scream echo through the valley, and then the surface of the loch hit him hard and the waters closed over him.

For a moment, all was perfect blackness. Coming to, he felt the water dragging at him, soaking his clothes and leather coat, pulling him down like a pair of greedy jaws. Panic gripped him. He could not swim. No chance of learning it in a sea teeming with serpents and water-holes guarded by bunyips. He beat his arms and legs, frantically, to no avail. He was sinking.

He opened his eyes to a world of blurred greens and blues, all sounds muffled. Fingers of light reached down into the muddy depths, a strangely beautiful sight even as his chest began to burn with the lack of air, a pain not unpleasant in its finality.

Falling, sinking, he glimpsed faces in the wafting greens. He quit the struggle and looked harder, blinking against the colourful blotches clouding his view. The image cleared and he gave a sigh when he saw her, the last gasp of breath eddying away over his head in bubbles of molten quicksilver. His mother — it was his mother. The face he thought he had forgotten.

She looked up at him with blue-green eyes, speckled as the sunlight on the loch, her black hair all loose in the current, slipping from the demure braids and knot. _Come,_ she said and held out a hand. _Come. We must go far away._

 _Yes,_ he wanted to say. _Yes, I am coming…_ He wanted to run to her, but he could not, his limbs numb and his chest burning. She was fading away into the dark depths.

 _Quick,_ he heard her say. _Quick, put on your boots. Quick, they are coming._

Despair choked him. He remembered this. He wore his boots. He could feel their weight dragging him. Could she not see? He was falling, deeper, darkness closing, cold. _I am coming… I am coming, mother… Don’t leave … Don’t leave me this time…_

A muffled roar, and then the water churned, boiled, a great head thrust down, swept around. Someone snatched him, pulled him back, up, out, away from her, against his will. He struggled and screamed, screamed like he had done on that terrible night, breathed water, gasped, the colours exploded, a flurry of bubbles and light shattering like glass, and darkness closed.

\- -

“Oh, it is only Rankin,” Temeraire growled, holding the limp and drenched figure to his face to peer at him. “Of course he is clumsy.”

“Is he dead?” Horatio asked.

“I don’t think so,” Temeraire said, sounding disappointed. “I can put him back.”

“No! Heavens, Temeraire, you cannot kill the man.”

“I do not see how I would be killing him. He fell in himself, and I pulled him out. I would only be undoing—“

“Interesting point,” Horatio groaned, “for another time, Temeraire! Hand him here.”

Temeraire did so, none too gently, and beat up again. “Roland once wrote to us that she wouldn’t mind if we were to drop Rankin off a cliff,” he grumbled, “and she was Admiral then. We really should have done it.”

“Ingram, Challoner, come here!” Horatio called over his shoulder, and then added, lower: “I hardly know you so unkind, Temeraire. Pray, how— oh, good grief.“ He broke off, staring.

He had turned the lifeless man over — young Rankin, indeed — and the head had flopped back, exposing an angry red line under the angle of the jaw, the skin wholly cut near the centre with the water-swollen edges gaping to show a flash of muscle, beads of bright blood welling up as he stirred and his eyelids fluttered.

Horatio hastily placed a hand over the wound, ostensibly to keep Rankin’s head to the side when he writhed and coughed, heaving up a gush of water, and tried to interpose himself between him and the lieutenants hurrying up. But it was too late. They stopped behind him.

“Mutiny,” Lieutenant Ingram said loudly, the ugly word hanging in the air, and Horatio would gladly have flung _him_ into the water, him and Rankin both.

“Temeraire,” he called, his voice flat, not quite his own. “We must go after Veloxia. — Ingram! Take him below.” He pushed Rankin away, towards his lieutenant: good to have them both out of sight.

“What?” Temeraire cried, craning his head around in high alarm. But Ingram and Challoner were already carrying Rankin away. “But I am sure Ingram is mistaken! Look, Veloxia is just there, waiting for us.”

Horatio looked, and indeed she sat at the shore, _stupid beast_ — why was she not running? Flying? Fleeing? Giving him at least a chance of letting them escape? But of course she wasn’t, would not have done so for all the crew’s begging: Her captain was at Laggan.

“Temeraire,” he began, “Ingram has a point. Rankin bears some strange injuries. There is something amiss. We must investigate, and, if it is so…” He broke off. Mutiny, even against the foulest, most negligent brat of an officer, was a hanging offense. He swallowed, and added, low: “I trust you know our duty.”

He felt the low growl running through the dragon’s body, a threatening reverberation. “Oh, whatever they did, I am sure he deserved it,” Temeraire hissed. “We should never have let him go away with her. If only you had spoken to me before—“

“Temeraire, that is enough!” Horatio snapped, standing up in his straps. “We will go down now. We will take Veloxia’s crew into custody, and we will escort her back to Laggan. _That_ is our duty! The rest is not for us to decide.”

\- -

Veloxia sat in a crumpled heap, her wings fanned protectively over her crew. Horatio clambered down the harness — Temeraire had not offered him his talon — and walked towards her, a hand on the hilt of his sword.

She was trembling with her head ducked low, but the great purple eyes returned his gaze with a strange, fixed expression. There was no remorse he could see, only exhaustion, and Horatio cursed Rankin from the bottom of his soul even as his mind ran through the calculations — wretched calculations, _politics_. No question of right or wrong — goodness, he knew that much! — but of his chances of getting away with it, collusion with mutineers as much a court-martial offense as the crime itself. But behind him, Temeraire stood tense, his claws furrowing the ground and the great chest swelled out, a roar barely held back, and he suddenly knew that if he _did_ denounce them, his command would likewise be over, the fledgling trust between them trampled. He knew what Laurence would do, and Temeraire knew it. _And they say inheriting a dragon makes for an easy path._

So he grasped the last straw that offered itself: wilful blindness.

“Veloxia,” he said. “It appears we came just in time to prevent a terrible accident! We have recovered your lost man. Are you hurt, or any of your crew? Pray may I speak with them, to see how they are?”

She did not reply, but slowly unfolded her wings to reveal the small tense knot of her crew, a dozen men, the little runner and ensign included, the damning picture building up like bricks. One of her officers limped forward, a bloodied hand pressed to his side. “Sir,” he said, hoarsely, and broke off.

“Lieutenant Dobson,” Horatio said, taking him by the shoulder, “what happened? Did your pistol misfire? — Are all of your crew accounted for? We will take you back to Laggan, for that wound to be dressed and your men to have a rest. You’ve all been used a little too roughly, I daresay.” He turned. “Temeraire! Do you think you can take them? Veloxia should not be burdened.”

“Yes, of course,” Temeraire said, the taut muscles unwinding a little as he padded towards them. Dobson only gave him a dazed look, the expression of a man gone beyond caring, and nodded. Temeraire held out his talon. But when the men moved to climb in, Veloxia splayed out her wings and growled.

“Oh,” Temeraire said, stepping back. “Sorry. Of course you can carry them, if you like.” And leaning over he added, in what only a dragon would have thought of as a confidential whisper: “Don’t worry. I will not let anyone hurt them. You were in the right, I am sure.”

\- -

They landed in the castle’s courtyard. Horatio did not want to lose time: They had bound up Dobson’s bullet wound as best they could, but the man had still fainted twice on the way back, sending Veloxia, already anxious over her crew, into a mad and unsustainable rush. Temeraire had had to fly after her, catch her with no small difficulty, and bat her around the head to bring her to her senses. Rankin had not stirred, either, but that concerned no-one.

In the unbroken heat, the warmed flagstones were empty of dozing beasts. Those not engaged in drills or training had retreated to their cooler clearings in the forest, and Horatio already breathed a sigh of relief to think they had slipped through unnoticed, when someone shouted “Captain Laurence!” and a clerk hurried from the castle’s portal, waving a sheet of paper. “I could not find you anywhere. Message form Admiral Portland! He requests your attendance in Laetificat’s clearing.”

“This is a bad time,” Horatio snapped, with a look over his shoulder: Veloxia had landed behind Temeraire, but was now fidgeting and roving the courtyard in a thoroughly suspect manner. “Give him my apologies. I will see him as soon as the dragons are settled.”

“He wants to see you now,” the clerk insisted. “About the formation’s report.”

“It must wait,” Horatio said, shouldering his way past the man. The entrance hall with its beams, stuffed deer heads and pikes arranged in roundels opened before him and he had to restrain himself not to break into a run, the clerk’s bewildered gaze still in his back. The way to the sick-bay seemed to have gained a mile since he had last walked it. When he finally pushed open the door to the surgeon’s watch room, he found Mr Blythe on duty, playing cards with a courier-captain.

“I’ve need of a hand,” he said curtly, “down in the grounds. Come with me.”

“What is it? Can’t you bring ‘em here?” the surgeon said, without looking up from his cards.

“No,” Horatio said and counted long seconds while the man cursed, muttered and groped for his case. His temper was running short, and as soon as Blythe stepped out of the room, he ungently pulled him into the shade of a rusting suit of armour.

“Looks as though you were losing,” he hissed, and Blythe blinked at him confused. He brought out a silver crown. “Now listen. I’ve got a man who has made a right bungle of his pistol and another who got himself into an argument, but I don’t want a noise about it, and neither do they. Patch them up and be quiet about it, and you will be none the poorer after that game of yours. Understood?”

Blythe stared at the coin a moment, and then grunted and shrugged his shoulders. “Where are the blighters?”

Horatio pointed upstairs. “Come with me.”

\- -

Rankin was awake, alas, and sitting in a chair when Horatio opened the door to his room. Ingram had stuck to his orders and had him and Dobson brought to the bower through the servants’ back stairs, but he had not left as instructed, and now quickly stepped away from Rankin — rather too quickly, Horatio registered.

“Thank you, James,” he said, smiling amicably, and waved the lieutenant back when Ingram would have saluted and left. “Just stay here a moment.” He walked to the window. Temeraire had succeeded at herding Veloxia into a corner so her crew could disembark, his black bulk, for the moment, concealing the hapless men, but they were still on broad display in the courtyard. “Temeraire!” he called. “Take Veloxia and her crew to your pavilion and make sure she has something to eat. I’ll be a short while.”

“Yes,” Temeraire said and brought his head up to the window, ruff drooping unhappily. “Horatio, she asks how her captain is doing.”

“I don’t know, but I promise I will call on him as soon as we are done here, and send word at once.”

Temeraire nodded and withdrew to gently nudge Veloxia back to her feet, leaving Horatio to stand at the window a moment blinking after them, a strange warmth rising in his chest: how great a relief to be, for once, united in purpose. It almost made it all worth the risk.

Blythe had already walked to Dobson on the bed and unwrapped the bandages. “Sit up,” he grunted, flinging open his case for a pair of tweezers. Horatio caught Ingram’s eye and together, they propped him. “Much blood for nothing,” Blythe muttered, probing the wound with a detached interest. “But an odd angle indeed! How did this happen?”

He pushed the instrument in deeper, Dobson whimpered, and Horatio gave Blythe a warning look. “Well,” the surgeon said, straightening. “Nothing to extract here. That ball’s only grazed a rib and the pleura’s intact, though I cannot vouch for the lungs underneath. A good firm dressing and no flying, for a month at least.”

“Can you do it now?”

“If you have some clean linen.”

Horatio compressed his lips and went for the wardrobe, to draw out a towel and two of his shirts. Oh, his father would have much joy of his expense-sheet. _Lost a crown at cards. Tore apart two shirts._

“Where’s the other one?” Blythe asked when he was done, wiping his hands and looking around the room. Rankin had remained silent and unmoving all through the procedure and now glared at them, contemptously.

“That will do,” Horatio said, pushing Blythe’s case shut for him and handing him another shilling. “You may go. — And you too, Dobson. Go to your room. Ingram here can check on Veloxia later.”

He helped the man up and Dobson left on shaky feet, muttering “m’obliged, Captain”.

Horatio watched him slink away down the corridor, his shirt and coat arranged over the bandages. A causal look would not notice anything amiss. Veloxia’s men would not betray him, of course, he thought — but what about his own crew? Could he depend on them, rely on the disdain any aviator felt to see a dragon mistreated? He went through the names and faces in his head. Admiral Granby had always placed great importance on knowing his crew, their hopes, dreams and vices, the instinct of a man risen from the ranks through hard work and a constant guard, and Horatio intended to live up to his example. He felt confident of his men, for the most part. They had no cause to hate him. He had not played the tyrant or the stickler as some newly made captains were wont to, somehow still conscious of his twenty-two years. Most of the midwingmen and ensigns had begun as penniless orphans under Admiral Laurence’s protection, Challoner had come from Gibraltar at his sister Emily’s recommendation, and midwingman Dlamini was his own niece. No, only Ingram remained to be uneasy about, a man foisted on him by the clockwork of promotion that dictated that a man of twenty years’ service, even one of insufficient influence for a chance with an egg, must have a post on a heavyweight.

“Ingram,” he called, waving him over to the door. He took a breath, steeling himself, and then smiled at the lieutenant. “You must excuse me for asking a question that’s been on my mind for a while.”

Ingram looked bewildered. “Sir, I really should be going—“

“Nonsense, James, answer me. You came to us with some excellent references, but there was something about your papers that struck me as odd. I really must beg you to enlighten me on this point, so the error can be corrected. Your record, at present, states you are the son of a Nathaniel Ingram of Pontefract, Yorkshire. A watchmaker and noted elder of the Society of Friends.”

Ingram nodded, barely. “That is correct, sir.”

“Indeed?” Horatio exclaimed. “Well, I am astonished. I recall one band of Quakers in New Brunswick flat-out refusing to sell us cattle because feeding a fighting-beast went against their beliefs. We had to requisition the cows by force! It never made any sense to me.” He inclined his head sideways. “It does seem a strange leap from refusing to so much as feed a dragon to serving on one, wouldn’t you say? Does your family approve of your choices?”

“The Corps welcomes men of all walks, so long as they are willing to serve,” Ingram said, mechanically. “And from a young age, I knew I wanted to be an aviator.”

“Indeed,” Horatio sighed. “And nothing can be said against your service. But how do you hold it with your oath of allegiance to the Queen? As far as I know, your brethren will refuse to swear to anything at all — yet to refuse the oath is unlawful, for a man in Her Majesty’s service, is it not?”

Ingram’s face looked stony now. “I prefer to keep these things between the Lord and myself, sir, and in twenty-five years, nobody has ever objected.”

“Oh, I do not mean to object,” Horatio shrugged. “Far from it. You are an worthy officer, and I for my part could not care less if you are indeed a Quaker, or a Mohammedan or a Jew or a Papist for that matter, so long as you do your work. But I know certain people care, people with influence. And would it not be a shame if these things were to come between you and the admiralty, say, or between you and promotion, rather than staying between yourself and the Lord?”

Ingram was silent.

Horatio opened the door. “Well, lieutenant, I am glad we have had a chance to talk frankly,” he said. “Perhaps you will think on my words. — Pray see how Veloxia is doing, and tell Temeraire I will be with him shortly.”

Ingram nodded and walked out past him with long, stiff strides. Horatio closed the door behind him and leaned against it a moment. He felt exhausted and bitter and dirty. The day had gone all wrong.

“So you are set on protecting a pack of mutinous dogs,” someone snarled. “As becomes a traitor’s chance-begotten bastard. Only you don’t have your father’s backbone, so you go bribing the surgeon and blackmailing your lieutenant.”

He looked up. Goodness, he had almost forgotten Rankin’s presence in the chair at the far side of the room.

“Yes,” he said, flatly. “And you should be glad of it, for if I had, I would have run you through and damn the consequences. But speaking of backbone, Rankin.” He pushed himself away from the door. “If you have one last scrap of decency left in you, you will now change your stock to cover that scratch, accompany me to see Captain Lowe, apologize for the wrong you have done his dragon, and hand in your resignation.” He flung open a drawer, pulled out a black neckcloth and tossed it into Rankin’s lap.

The lieutenant stared at up at him, eyes full of spite, but Horatio did not flinch, and after a moment, Rankin looked away and raised a hand to undo his blood-stained tie. His neck looked pale and vulnerable against the sunburnt skin of his face and hands. Horatio quickly turned to the desk for paper.

“Oh, and one more thing,” he said, putting the sheets down in front of Rankin. “Be cautious of your tongue. You can insult me all you like, but Temeraire is so very easily driven into a passion, concerning my Lord father.”


	8. Blood

Stuart put down the pen, slowly, and Captain Laurence quit his pacing of the room to take up the page and read it over: Lieutenant S. J. Rankin’s respectful request for discharge from Her Majesty’s Aerial Corps.

“Perfect,” he nodded. “And what an elegant hand you write. Get up.”

Stuart rose. He would not give the satisfaction of begging or protesting, no. Icy contempt was the only answer to this ill-use, and so far, it answered. For all the smiling cheerfulness with which he had dished Lieutenant Ingram earlier, Horatio Laurence’s face was now locked in a dark scowl.

“Presentable enough,” he muttered, looking Stuart up and down. “So long as you keep your coat on. Only do something about your hair, it looks like a crow’s nest.” He pointed to a horn-cut comb on the washstand, flicking his fingers as if directing a servant.

“Is there to be no end to this ridiculous charade?” Stuart sighed, walking over.

“Shut it, Rankin.”

Stuart picked up the comb and worked it, perfunctorily, against the tangled mess of three days a-dragonback, but after a bare moment, Captain Laurence snatched it from his hands and tossed it aside. “Never mind. Let us go.”

The outer layers of Stuart’s clothing had dried by now, but walking the windowless corridor of the captains’ quarters, lit at intervals by guttering candles, the chill from the stone walls made him shiver. He had not eaten or drunk since dawn and the black stock covering his bloodied collar grated against the knife-wound, each step a fresh stab of pain. He felt his head spinning and his stomach riling, and quickly put out a hand to steady himself against the dank wall.

“Onwards, Rankin,” Captain Laurence commanded behind him.

Stuart tried to master himself and put the next step forward, but found he could not, his knees threatening to give out under him and his throat strangled with something very near a sob. His shoulder grazed the wall. “I have nowhere to go,” he heard himself say, hoarsely.

“You should have considered that before abusing the dragon,” Captain Laurence said, unmoved. “Besides, everybody knows your uncle’s rich as Croesus. You’ll get over it soon enough. Now come on!”

He grasped hold of Stuart’s arm to push him forward, and the insolence of it sufficed to return Stuart to his senses. “I shall do very well alone,” he snapped, gritting his teeth and stumbling onward. Oh, there yet remained a place to go: the cold, silent embrace of the lake.

“Here we are,” Captain Laurence said after a few more paces, pausing to knock on a door. “Captain Lowe! Lieutenant Rankin here to see you.”

There was no answer. He called again and knocked, louder. “Sir, can we trouble you a moment?”

Stuart crossed his arms, staring out into the darkness. “Well?”

He heard Captain Laurence draw a breath, and then the handle squeaked and the door swung open. “Sir, I’m terribly sorry, but—“

After the darkness of the corridor, the late afternoon sun falling through the windows was enough to dazzle. Blinking, Stuart saw an untidy room and Captain Lowe’s hand hanging over the side of the bed, limp and unmoving.

They rushed forward both at once, but Stuart was quicker. Lowe’s eyes were closed, his face covered with a thin film of sweat. Stuart grasped hold of his shoulder and shook him, hard. “Sir!”

Lowe groaned and opened his eyes to look at them, glazed and unfocused. “Rankin?” he muttered. “…Velly?”

Stuart turned to glare at Captain Laurence. “How long has be been like this? Is this why you were sent for Veloxia? Why did you not tell me?”

“By God, what are you insinuating?” Horatio Laurence exclaimed. “I saw him last night and he was perfectly lucid!” He grasped hold of the blanket and pulled it away. Lowe’s splinted leg almost disappeared under layers of starched bandages, but the bare foot at its end was a blotchy purple.

Stuart straightened and turned to make for the corridor. “Right. I’ll fetch the surgeon.”

“If that is what you’re intending, you’re going entirely the wrong way!” Captain Laurence said, catching up with him, and Stuart bit his tongue: he truly did not have his bearings in Laggan castle.

Captain Laurence took the lead through a flight of corridors, past gobelins and rusting weapons, windings stairs and creaking doors. Stuart’s knees still quivered and his breath came in stuttering gasps, but he found the fatigue easier to ignore now, from long use: He had a duty, and he would attend to it.

When they burst into the sick bay, a coarse-looking man turned from a table littered with playing cards and coins. “Well, Laurence, if that Rankin wretch has changed his mind, he can jolly well wait until-“

“It’s not him, Blythe,” Captain Laurence snapped. “It’s Lowe. He has taken a turn for the worse. You must see him at once.”

The surgeon exchanged a glance with his game partner. Then he craned his head into the curtained bays of the sickroom and shouted: “Parker! You had the round this morning, didn’t you?”

The head of one of the surgeon’s mates appeared between the grubby curtains. “Yes, Sir.”

“Anything to say of Captain Lowe?”

“No, sir. All fine, sir.”

“Did you look under the blankets?”

“Yes, why, o’course, sir!”

Mr Blythe settled back with a sigh, picking up a bottle. “There you have it. And if you will now—“

Stuart stepped forward, pushing Captain Laurence aside, snatched the bottle from Blythe’s hand and put it on the table hard enough to set the cards aflutter. “You will obey your orders now,” he snarled, “or we can have a trial for insubordination.”

They all stared at him, and then the surgeon took his case, summoned his assistant and followed them without another word.

\- -

“I will need you to hold him down,” Blythe huffed, cutting off the final layer of bandaging, and Stuart tried not to retch. He had seen his fair share of wounds, but the blank piece of bone protruding from Lowe’s shin where the splint had slipped, with the surrounding skin all blackened and the leg mottled, was ugly beyond measure.

Next to him, Captain Laurence swallowed. “Should he not have something to dull the pain?”

“Nonsense,” Blythe growled, spreading a canvas roll of grim-looking instruments. “Speed’s the essence. — Oh, you slovenly son of a bitch, you should have called me hours ago!” He glared at his pale and flustered assistant, and then directed much the same gaze at Stuart and Captain Laurence, screwing a tourniquet tight. Lowe groaned.

“Right, gentlemen. Two minutes of your time. Hold him steady as ever you may.”

Stuart resigned himself to his fate, took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves and grasped hold of Lowe’s chest and arms, and after a moment, Captain Laurence followed suit, stepping up next to him to restrain the patient’s hips and other leg. Blythe took a long, curved blade, nodded at them, and then brought it down in one determined sweep.

Lowe bellowed and fought with astonishing ferocity. Stuart had to bear him down with all his weight, his cheek almost flush to his captain’s, his heart racing and the seconds stretching away into eternity. The commotion drew two servants who stood in the door to gape, shadows at the edge of Stuart’s vision as he pushed down with every last scrap of strength he could muster. Blythe snapped a command at his mate, gesturing to some instrument to tie a spurting vessel. A further clash and clang of metal, some frantic activity, a hard tug, and then the bone-saw began its grisly work. A low thump reached Stuart from far away, a strange, heavy, object noise, and it took him a moment to realize it had come from the severed limb pushed aside and falling to the floor. Lowe sank back sobbing, the strain on his arms suddenly released.

Stuart looked up. Next to him, Captain Laurence still crouched over the patient’s belly with his eyes determinedly fixed to the wall, his cheeks ashen. Blythe and Parker were suturing over a bloodied stump. Stuart made a step backwards, stumbled over the carpet, groped blindly for the nearest surface and would nearly have knocked the case of instruments off the table, when a hand caught him and steadied him.

“Mr Blythe,” Captain Laurence said, “are we still wanted here?”

“No,” the surgeon growled without looking up. Stuart let himself be drawn from the room by the firm grasp on his arm, and only remembered to snatch it away when Captain Laurence kicked open the door to his own room. He did not pause to look back at Stuart, but walked straight to a small cellar on a table, flung open the lid and pulled out a decanter, unstopping it to take a swallow straight from the bottle.

“Oh, _fucking_ hell!” he exclaimed, turning around to proffer the drink, mechanically, his eyes staring into a far distance. “He might not make it. I’ll have to tell his dragon…”

Stuart stood stiffly for a moment, taken aback to hear such language from an officer’s mouth, and then took the beautifully worked crystal decanter. He looked around for a glass, saw none, and lifted it to his lips for a cautious sip: unadulterated malt whisky, smoky and burning on the tongue. He took another.

“I can go, Captain,” he said.

“The devil, Rankin, if you think I will let you speak to her and tell her this is her own fault-“ Captain Laurence flared, his gaze focusing again and his eyes narrowed. Stuart quickly pushed the bottle back into his hands.

“I shan’t,” he said, coldly. “But I will have to see her anyways, to inform her of my resignation, if you care to remember.”

For a moment, Captain Laurence looked confused. Then he frowned and drew out the folded note. “Right. Take it straight to Portland then, and-” Here, he interrupted himself, groaned and pressed a hand to his forehead. He had been nearer the action and one side of his clothing was blood-spattered, though he scarcely seemed to notice. “Oh, _no_ ,” he muttered. “The report… I must go at once.”

\- -

Stuart found Veloxia in her own clearing, but Temeraire’s black shadow loomed ominously behind the pine trees, the Celestial’s ruff pricking up as he walked past. He tried to ignore it.

“Veloxia,” he said, quietly. She startled and leapt to her feet.

“Where’s Henry?” she cried, her tail lashing the ground in high agitation. “Temeraire said his captain would send word! Why has he not come? Oh, what have you done to my captain, where are you keeping him?”

“Veloxia,” Stuart said again. “Captain Lowe…” He bit his lip, and then said quickly: “He got worse. They had to amputate the leg.”

She gave an anguished cry. “Is he alive?”

“He was when I left him.”

“Am I allowed to see him?” she asked, hunching herself down. “Please?”

Stuart hesitated. He was no fool. He could see the faces of her crew watching him through the underbrush, the mutineers, the felons, the ones he still meant to report, resignation or no, peering over from Temeraire’s clearing — not hard to imagine how they had come to be there, under that renegade dragon’s wing. _You must establish discipline,_ reason demanded, _and not spoil the beast,_ but the voice dwindled to a whisper under Veloxia’s gaze, pleading and anxious, as if he had any power to restore her captain’s limb and life, as if he had any power to do good at all.

Stuart made a step back. Her eyes followed him, and suddenly Lowe’s scream was in his ears again, his blood mingling with his own on his shirt and all over Captain Laurence’s sleeve, a scarlet stream swelling with that of Lieutenant Dobson and John Daley and the young warrior at the water-hole, red like the evening clouds in the sky. He pressed both hands to his eyes, desperate, but he could not shut out the images once they had come, the black dragon blood of the bunyip flowing into Dash’s and his mother’s and that of her murderers, the rebels on the scaffold at Parramatta before his father had given the command and they had plunged to their deaths, a sickening warm flood, rising, and if he added that of the crew, it sure would drown him…

He turned and ran from it, back to the castle, panting and staggering, in front of all eyes, but he could not bring himself to care. _Honour be damned, respect be damned, and rules be damned thrice._

The room in the bower was empty when he flung open the door, and he stared at the empty bed, a mess of bloody sheets discarded onto the floor. He turned and hurried down to corridor to hammer on Captain Laurence’s door. “Sir! Sir! Do you know where they’ve taken him?”

But nobody answered. Stuart paused, gasping for breath. Did they have a morgue? _Oh, Veloxia…_ He had to find the surgeon.

He had only the shadiest recollection of the maze of corridors they had walked earlier, but despair sped his steps, and at the next crossing he nearly collided with a maidservant carrying a stack of fresh linen.

“Put that down!” he barked, seizing the sheets from her hands to fling aside. “The sick-room. Take me to it, quick as you can!”

The girl stared at him as if he were some maniac, but then she nodded and scurried ahead, by a faster route than the one Captain Laurence had used, thanks be to God, down back stairs with peeling paint and bell-ropes stretching above their heads, to emerge straight into the sick bay. There was a commotion behind one of the curtains. Stuart stumbled up to it to pull it aside, and blinked into the faces of Mr Blythe and three assistants, all struggling to hold down a man desperately trying to claw his way out of the bed. Relief surged through him: It was Captain Lowe, alive.

“Lieutenant, fetch us that buckle there, at once!” Blythe barked, pointing to a leather strap hanging from a wall. “Sir, you must stay down or you will do yourself a harm! — Pay him no mind, he is delirious.”

Stuart walked to the wall to take the belt, confused. It looked much like a piece of harness and in the first instant, he could not imagine what the surgeon should want with it. Then he saw the heavy iron rings at the sides of the bed to receive the strap, to tie a patient down.

“No!” Captain Lowe gasped behind the men restraining him. “Oh please, no… Velly…”

Stuart stared down at the belt in his hands. Not long ago, he would have fettered him and seen it his duty, would even have congratulated himself on the logical lesson for Veloxia. _An action must trigger a response…_

“Step away,” he said, tossing the belt aside, and pushed his way through the press. “Captain, sir? Can you stand?”

“Are you barking mad?” one of the surgeon’s mates gasped, reaching for his arm. “He ‘as no leg to walk on!”

Stuart shook him off. “I am taking him to see his dragon.”

“Stop this lunacy, at once!” Mr Blythe shouted. “I forbid it!”

Stuart ignored him. “You there!” he snapped at the assistants. “Fetch something help me carry him out, or else get out of my way.”

Under his hard glare, they flinched and went for a stretcher leaning on the far side of the room. Stuart felt a hand on his arm. “Rankin,” Captain Lowe whispered, weakly, “I don’t know what you’re about… but you’re the most unlikely angel ever sent…”

Stuart hastily freed himself to readjust his stock, the knot threatening to unravel, and stepped aside for the men to carry up the stretcher. Lowe winced when they lifted him across, but he did not cry out. Stuart nodded. “Right. Out we go, to the clearings.”

“To the clearings? Good god, Rankin!” Blythe exclaimed. “Your fault alone if he dies in the night!”

Stuart gave him his back. “Come,” he told the men. “We have no time to lose.”

Veloxia was still pacing when they reached her, two saplings knocked clean down, but she paused when they appeared on the path, one claw in mid-air.

“My captain,” she said, in an small, baffled voice. “You have brought me my captain.”

“Yes. And I am sorry for ever keeping him from you,” Stuart muttered, quickly turning to the men. “That’ll do! Set him down and get yourselves gone. — Veloxia, slowly! You must be careful or you will hurt him.”

He jumped in front of her snatching talons and she slowed a little, to pick Lowe up with infinite care and rub her head against his outstretched hands. “Oh, Henry! I will never let them take you away again!”

Captain Lowe muttered something in reply, and Stuart turned away. He should go and pack his things, he thought, and see it through with the admiral, now that he had so wholly debased himself. But a leaden exhaustion had taken hold of his limbs. He slumped down at the side of the clearing, just for a moment’s rest, he thought.

Lieutenant Ingram came out of Temeraire’s clearing, paused, and looked around before walking closer. “I daresay my captain has overstepped his mark today,” he muttered, low. “Would you not agree?”

Stuart did not reply, his thoughts frayed and his head wholly incapable of remembering what the man was talking about. Other voices rang out from Temeraire’s clearing, a group of midwingmen appearing to pelt down the path cheering and jostling, and Ingram quickly straightened and walked on.

Stuart sat motionless as the steps and voices fell away. In the settling gloom behind him, Veloxia had curled up tightly around Captain Lowe, their breaths in unison, easier now. He shivered despite the warmth of the summer night, but the thought of facing his fellows in the dormitory was unbearable. So he crawled into the mossy underbrush, pulled his coat over himself, and went to sleep there.


	9. Ex formatio

Horatio Laurence read his orders twice over, and had to compose himself not to crumple the sheet. Outside the window, a blackbird broke into its fluting morning song, a beautiful pearling sequence of notes, deeply irritating. 

“Sir,” he began, looking up at the Admiral’s desk. “I daresay this is not quite what I was expecting.”

“Indeed?” Admiral Portland asked, looking up. “Does it need to be? According to your report, the new manoeuvre was child’s play for your formation, so this should hardly give you trouble. I meant to ask you yesterday, but I believe you were held up elsewhere, and-“

“I was here at six o’clock, but your aide refused to let me in, for breach of uniform regulations!”

“… and I have already given our guest of honour my word,” the white-haired admiral finished, glaring at him.

Horatio swallowed. He had spent a wretched night, tossing and turning with barely a wink of sleep, and his head yet throbbed, but he knew he must not let it show. “Guest of honour, sir?”

“The MP for the borough, who I am sure you have heard of. It would be quite shabby not to give him a chance to review the Highland Regiment, when he was so very instrumental in raising it in the first place.”

“I see,” Horatio muttered. Of course he had heard of the MP for the borough, one could not sit two minutes together at his father’s table without being inundated with political talk, much less captain Temeraire.

“Yes, and I must ask for a little more enthusiasm than this,” Admiral Portland said, a sharp note coming into his voice. “Captain, how do propose to command a formation, if you have not yet learned to obey? And now go and prepare them — you are dismissed!”

He waved a hand. Horatio quenched the fire of indignation that would very nearly have drawn out an angry reply, saluted, and left.

The queue of callers outside the admiral’s chambers jumped aside as soon as they saw his set shoulders and general expression, all except one, with whom, consequently, he nearly collided.

“Rankin!” Horatio groaned. “What the hell are you doing here?”

The young lieutenant looked up bewildered as if he had not been attending to his surroundings at all, but at the sight of him, his faerie-eyes darkened. “Why, I am waiting to hand in my resignation,” he snapped.

“Right,” Horatio said. “So Portland refused to see you too, then, last night?”

Rankin put up his chin and did not reply. Horatio cast a quick glance at the other callers, but they were only civilians and courier-captains with their satchels, nobody from his crew or Veloxia’s, so he turned back to the lieutenant. “Blythe came bleating something about you abducting his patient,” he said, low. “Is that true?”

“Veloxia would not settle down otherwise.”

“I see,” Horatio said, taken aback to think the fellow should have undertaken something vaguely charitable. “And how does Captain Lowe?”

“I have just sent a servant down with some breakfast.”

“Have you indeed? Astonishing… Well, I suppose I must still count Veloxia out. She’ll be in a right state over him, and no lieutenant either.” He glanced at the folded sheet in his hands, anger welling up afresh. Rankin did not stir.

“What?” Horatio broke out, holding up the orders. “Not that you’d care, but the admiral’s invited a band of feral irregulars to play battle with! No flares, no incendiaries, but a _flag_! All that practice, for nothing… I daresay Temeraire can hold his own, but Albus and Orion have never even seen action. If only I had known, I would have had them at boarding-drills!”

Rankin’s frown deepened, and the two courier captains were stealing glances at him now. Horatio broke off and took a deep breath, composing himself with an effort. “Well, I had better.” He scratched his aching head. “Word of advice, though. If you want to get past that stupid scribe in the antechamber, you had better brush your coat… You do know we have a set of baths just under the castle? I can point you the way, and if you find any skivers, you may send them straight up."

The look of sheer mortification crossing Lieutenant Rankin's face at this suggestion almost repaid him for the morning’s disappointments.

"No? Right. Your loss, then.”

\- -

“A flag?” Captain Lowe asked from where he sat propped between Veloxia’s foreclaws.

“Yes,” Stuart said.

He had meant to hand in his note and then go to the lake, but he had accomplished neither of these things. The admiral had left his rooms shortly after Captain Laurence’s departure to attend to the busy preparations in the training grounds, and Stuart had had no choice but to hand his resignation to an ungracious secretary who had looked him up and down disdainfully and tossed the note into a tray, reminding him the admiral was _busy_. At the lake, the shore had been thronged with dragons and men busily scrubbing away until hides and harness-parts gleamed in the morning sun. The couriers were not going out until the next day, either. So he had found himself wandering back into Veloxia’s clearing.

Captain Lowe looked much improved. Blythe had paid a visit at dawn, with a bottle of laudanum. His patient's face was yet pale and drawn with pain, but his eyes were clear and smiling whenever they settled on Veloxia, the dragon keeping an anxious guard over him with the air of a great mother-hen.

“Lieutenant, can you fetch me my glass?” he asked now, looking around. “Wherever have all the crew got to?”

“I have given them leave for the day,” Stuart said, a half-truth to spare Lowe's nerves. “Captain Laurence did not request our participation in the drill, and there appears to be something of a… festivity.”

Lowe looked astonished. “Did you indeed?… Why, yes. The review of the troops is a splendid occasion in the big old big coverts. Oh, the times we used to have, back in the day — the spectacle, the food, the lasses! We planned to hold a review in Sydney once, but Commander Rankin —“ He broke off, discomfited, as if he expected Stuart to take offense at this hint of criticism.

Stuart handed him the telescope and diligently avoided his eyes.

“Well,” Lowe began again. “Veloxia, shall we go and find a good place to watch? Lieutenant, I must trouble you to help me up.”

Stuart nodded. Veloxia’s hide shuddered almost imperceptibly when he put a hand on her harness to pull himself up, but she did not throw him off. He helped Lowe to his seat and propped him, and they flew the short distance to the training grounds.

After a morning of busy preparations, the stretch between the castle and the loch looked entirely changed, banners and bunting made from old signal-flags hung from whatever pole, wall or tree could be bent to the purpose, and those areas not closed off with ropes had grown thronged with people. The inhabitants of the surrounding hovels were too used to dragons to be shy, and every last man, woman and child seemed to be in attendance, lending the proceedings the atmosphere of a county fair. Gypsies were peddling scissors and ribbons and hotcakes, children in their Sunday best craned their heads after the dragons, and the local troop of Foot Guards drilled before the eyes of the crowd, marching to the unmelodious drone of their bagpipes and drums. The press was great enough that they struggled to find a place for Veloxia, finally settling in a spot near the clearings that afforded a view of the grounds while keeping the nervous dragon and her injured captain away from the worst excesses of curiosity.

At the clang of the midday bell, Laetificat beat up from the castle’s courtyard to fly a wide circle over the grounds and land in the empty cordoned round. She handed Admiral Portland down, roared out for attention over everyone’s heads and then stood majestically, the sun playing all over her red-and-gold hide.

“Poor thing,” Captain Lowe remarked, propped against Veloxia’s claw and watching through his glass. He handed it to Stuart. “The plague took a very bad toll on her. I saw it as a young mid… skin and bones she was, and wheezing to this day. Prodigious good luck she and Portland accepted this post, though. It would’ve been a right shame to have one of our most experienced flyers buried in the breeding grounds.” And indeed, looking through the glass, Stuart could see the Regal Copper’s sides heaving, unnaturally after so short an exertion.

Into the expectant silence, Admiral Portland greeted the spectators, and a roll of the drums summoned the two formations currently in training, Temeraire’s and that of a young Longwing whom he announced as Procella. They descended to take up position in a neat row behind Laetificat, to a hearty cheer from the crowd.

“And you are quite sure he means to set them against ferals?” Lowe asked when Stuart handed him the glass back, looking around. There wasn’t a claw or wing to be seen.

Veloxia gave a started roar when a small dragon swept by overhead, its curved talons nearly scoring her shoulders. The beast looked back, wheeled around and touched down a small distance away. He was a grey and blue colour and wore a colourful tartan blanket draped over one shoulder, clasped with a dented silver brooch. “Why are you sitting there, lazily?” he demanded. “Why aren’t you with the others?”

“My captain is too ill to fly,” Veloxia said, wounded, and quickly folded her wings over Captain Lowe.

The feral laughed. “Well, your fault for taking one. You could be happy and free like our lot!”

Stuart rose. “Away with you!” he hissed. “Leave her alone!”

The feral looked down at him. “And who would this be?” he asked. “Well, it don’t much matter. You can all sit here and watch us give these people-slaves a good drubbing.”

He darted off again, with a loud bugling cry, and suddenly, a whole squadron of small ferals broke from the hills and forest, squabbling and knocking each other out of the way.

“Ah,” Lowe said, pushing Veloxia’s wing aside to raise his glass again. “So that will be that little trouble-monger Ricarlee the other captains were talking about.”

“He appears to be strangely popular with the villagers,” Stuart said, watching in disbelief as the feral pack settled down opposite the formations in a messy heap, a bizarre mirror image to their precise order. The crowd’s cheer at their arrival, however, had been no less rousing.

“Oh, of course he is,” Lowe shrugged. “He holds the Highland seat in parliament, and I am told his band have taken in a good many of the Gaels who’d been cleared off for sheep-farming… the Sutherlands must still be gnashing their teeth about it, but I suppose they can’t do anything about the dragons allowing them to settle and to tend sheep and cattle for rent.”

Stuart could only shake his head at this shocking state of affairs, feral dragons lording it over wide swaths of the countryside with all its inhabitants. Admiral Portland conducted himself with shocking equanimity, however, bending his head to the blue beast and waving over a signal-ensign carrying his flag. Splendidly embroidered and edged in golden frills, this instantly caught the attention of the pack. Their leader screeched a command, and one of the other beasts hopped forward with what seemed to be their own standard: a piece of the tartan fabric they all wore, tied to a staff.

Laetificat reared up to proclaim the rules of the show-fight, the object of which was to capture the opposing band’s flag, a test of flying-skill: No ammunition, no incendiaries, no blood to be drawn. The spectators clapped when she dropped back onto all fours, the flags were passed back to the leader of the feral battalion and the Longwing’s captain, who swiftly handed it on to Captain Laurence, and aloft they went.The formations’ strategy was plain enough: Temeraire’s dragons to anchor the rear and protect the Admiral’s flag while the Longwing’s went after the ferals and sought to take theirs.

Thus or similar ran the theory, but the practice turned out a different matter. The ferals did not hold to any predictable formation and burst away into all directions, their flag almost instantly concealed from view. Stuart tried to count them, in vain — ten beasts or twelve or fifteen, impossible to tell when they were whirling and tumbling all over one another, and all of them similar mottled hues from slate-grey to hill-green, set apart from the sky by their colourful sashes. Dipping and diving, they tossed their flag to one another with shrill shrieks and hisses, and each beast pinned down or driven into a hillside was immediately relieved by another two or three who made away with the colours and sent their enemy into spinning circles. They skillfully evaded the formation’s claws and teeth and even Procella’s acid when she directed it against them in exasperation, prompting a sharp roar form Laetificat for violating the rules she had set them. The Longwing’s flags waved out the signal to retreat and reassemble, to cackling laughter from the ferals, and all of a sudden, Temeraire roared out in a fury, with an edge of a deep thundering reverberation that silenced the ferals and made Stuart’s skin crawl. The next moment, the Celestial had flung himself forward, right into the cloud of the irregulars.

For a moment, they seemed taken by surprise, their flag-bearer screeching and dropping low, with Temeraire at his heels. The shouted order to _leave off, Temeraire, retreat! Look up!_ drifted faintly on the wind, summarily ignored as the dragon went after the small beast, closing the distance, talons straining for his prize. Two ferals pounced neatly from above. Temeraire doubled back in surprise, his roar abruptly choked, and the ferals beat away again in a jostling crowd.

One of them made an untidy landing only a handful of yards away from Veloxia’s perch and opened its foreclaws to let out a bedraggled figure: Captain Laurence.

Above them, Temeraire roared out again. The feral screeched in alarm and would almost have snatched his prisoner back, but Captain Laurence raised his hands. “No, wait!” he said, and unhooked his sword to lay it down. “Well fought.”

The dragon cautiously edged forward to nose at it, and recoiled when Temeraire beat down next to him, hissing angrily: “Oh, that was unfair! You had no business snatching him away! — Horatio, are you hurt?”

“No,” Captain Laurence said. “We’re out, Temeraire. I’m sorry.” He walked over to stroke his dragon’s side while his crew clambered down with set and unhappy faces, and turned back to his captor: “I hope we can invite you to Temeraire’s clearing, later?”

The feral did not seem to hear him, wholly taken up with the sword. It was not a splendid trophy, the hilt worn and scraped and the scabbard bare of ornament save for a narrow strip of silver near the tip, but the little dragon still picked it up with a reverential air, and it occurred to Stuart that likely, he was not used to being treated like a fellow-officer. He himself could not help being oddly moved by the gesture, better conduct than he had seen in many a man, an upright humility that shared nothing with cowardice.

“I will get you a better sword,” Temeraire grumbled as the little feral trotted away with its prize.

“No, Temeraire. No more gifts, pray,” Captain Laurence said quietly, shielding his eyes to look up at the sky. The feral band, evidently impressed with the effectiveness of their own stratagem, were cheerfully targeting the human crews now, pouncing from above to snatch them up. Temeraire had had the sense to hand Portland’s flag to Orion, prior to his dive, but the poor Pecheur now found himself the very centre of the onslaught, the defense around him thinning.

“Oh, the bullies!” Veloxia said suddenly, next to Stuart. “Taking away our people and telling us we are weak for wanting to keep them! It is a disgrace.”

“They are not wrong,” Lowe chuckled. “You would be better off without me crippled lump.”

“I would not, and if you were strong enough to fly, I am sure we would teach them a lesson and take their flag,” she said, with vehemence. “They look very slow to me,” a shocking statement when the ferals were darting across the sky like arrows.

Captain Laurence turned to look at them in surprise, a smile breaking through his frown. “Captain Lowe! Why, I am glad to see you improve. Tell me, how-“ Then he caught sight of Stuart and broke off. For a brief moment, his face looked pained. Then he straightened his shoulders, gave a curt nod, and looked away.

Stuart felt his heart beating quicker as an idea struck him, forcefully. “Veloxia,” he said, turning to her and putting a hand on her side, quite against all better judgement. “Listen. I do not see any reason why you should not take their flag.”

\- -

“Sir!” Stuart called, waving at an old man who stood aside from the crowd, leaning on a gnarled shepherd’s staff and contemplating the spectacle above with a spotted collie-dog at his heels. He pointed at the tartan plaid hanging from the man’s shoulder. “Sir, please, I have need of your coat. I can give you…” He searched his pockets, but found nothing of value save his small silver snuffbox inlaid with opals, his father’s gift upon his making lieutenant, but that was not worth contemplating now. He held it out. “… this, and you may keep it.”

The old highlander looked at it bewildered, and then snorted and shook his head. “I cannae take that, my lad, or everyone will say I’ve stolen it! I want no trouble.” He folded Stuart’s fingers back over the silver, and, shrugging, took off the plaid to hand to him.

“Thank you, sir!” Stuart said with great relief. “I shall return it presently!”

Hurrying back to Veloxia’s side, he realized he had neglected to ask for name or directions. But there was no time to go back. A quick glance at the sky showed Procella in possession of the flag now, Temeraire’s formation all grounded save a small lightweight, and her own much thinned. At least the two runners borrowed from Temeraire’s crew had done as he had told them, and spread Veloxia’s sides with mud from the puddles still standing after the last downpour. Stepping around, he was surprised to find Ensign Gordon with them, drawing dots and swirling patterns the way the savages did back in Australia.

“They said you’ll send her in, sir,” the boy muttered, blushing deeply. “I thought it might bring her good luck.”

“Right. Enough, this will do!” Stuart said, too baffled to put real hardness into his voice. “Veloxia, will you let me put this on you?”

She lowered her head, with a circumspect look. The shepherd’s plaid was too small to pass around her shoulders, so Stuart knotted it around her neck like a kerchief. It was far from a perfect guise, but it was all that could be contrived in the short time. For the rest, she would have to rely on her small size and fast pace.

“Perfect, my heart,” Captain Lowe said, grimly pleased. “Now do me proud and fetch us that flag!”

She made a hesitant step forward, and then stopped. “I do not like to go alone,” she said, her voice quivering.

“But you must,” Stuart said. “Unless…” He looked at the boys, but they wiped their muddy hands and avoided his eyes. He could hardly blame them, looking at her own captain, any rider as likely to be flung clean off by one of her starts.

Above them, Procella could be heard hissing again, all heads turning skyward. Stuart stepped forward. “I can accompany you,” he said, quietly. “If you will have me.”

“You would?” she whispered back. “And you promise not to make me do things I do not like?”

“Yes, yes,” he said, urgently: Procella had four of them harrying her wings now.

Veloxia put out a claw, hesitantly, and Stuart stepped in to clamber up to her shoulder. There was no harness, only the slipping and sliding plaid. He put a hand on her neck. “Ready?”

She whipped her head in Captain Lowe’s direction, but he was looking at the sky like the rest of them, dismayed, so she gave a quick nod, shook out her wings, and they flew.

\- -

Flung into the thick of it, the struggle was even more chaotic. Stuart tried to look around as Veloxia circled the field, his eyes watering without the protection of his goggles. So far, the ferals had taken no notice of her, but he could not see the flag.

“Listen, Veloxia!” he shouted against the wind. “We must get closer. I want you to behave as badly as you can, do you understand? They must think you are one of them!

She looked startled for a moment, but then she bobbed her head, gathered up and launched herself into a zigzagging course right through the ranks of the ferals, with a piercing cry that startled him to the bone, and he was even more shaken to see one of the ferals rear up his head and answer it. A green dragon of the Longwing’s formation had seen them now and evidently took them for the enemy, wheeling around and darting down to attempt a raking blow. Veloxia shrieked and dipped sharply away, and suddenly, Stuart saw the flag, in a small brown feral’s talons, not fifty yards away.

“Veloxia, there!” he hissed. “Three points to port!”

She had understood, he knew by a small change in the angle of her wings, but the green dragon, a fully rigged Malachite Reaper, was still pursuing her. She strained to outfly him and the beast roared behind them, a volley of rifle-shot and a ball tearing through her wing-membrane, a spray of blood on the wind. Stuart straightened to look back, indignation surging through him. He cupped both hands around his mouth.

“Play to the rules, you imbeciles!” he shouted at the top of his voice. “We’re yours!”

The dragon startled and fell back, the volley abruptly curtailed as the men on his back shouted and pointed, and the next moment, Stuart realized his mistake: every feral's eyes abruptly fixed on him, and their shrill hunting-cries swelling on the wind.

“Fly, Veloxia!” he gasped, desperate, ducking low again and clasping both arms around her neck. He could feel her pulse race and her breaths stutter, and a terrible premonition spread through his mind. “Fly as fast as ever you may!”

But Veloxia did not bolt. She put her head down and flew, straight and true. _She really is uncommonly fast for a Reaper_ , one part of Stuart's mind observed, detached. The rest of him was stunned silent as she darted through the sky, straight for the flag.

Its small bearer tried to escape by beating away sideways, but the Malachite had come around now, cutting off his path. He tried a tight circle, beating his wings to escape upwards, but Veloxia was closing in fast. The feral squalled, opened his claws, and let the flag drop, its colours billowing out in a gaudy flash of green and red as it fell from the sky.

Veloxia roared, folded in her wings, and plummeted after it. Stuart closed his eyes. Any command he might have shouted would have been torn from his lips by the rush of the wind, but it did not matter. He felt a curious calm settling over him, and even a rousing, surging joy at the glorious speed at which they were tearing along, weightlessness almost, a joy not at all diminished by the sudden end he knew it must take…

But the end did not come. Veloxia roared again, triumphant, and snapped out her wings, the plummet abruptly broken. Her landing was soft as a feather’s, and a claw reached up to hand Stuart down as a distant roll of drums announced the end of the exercise. He heard the crowd cheer and opened his eyes confused and abruptly dizzy, to see Gordon and Midwingman Farlane running towards him hooting and waving their caps. Behind them, Captain Lowe stood on his one leg and grinned from ear to ear, leaning on Captain Laurence who had given him a hand and looked utterly baffled, staring down at the tartan flag clamped in Veloxia’s talon.


	10. A song and a dance

The great hall at Laggan Castle was packed out and stifling, alive with the sound of fiddles and drums. Molly Murray kept herself to the back, near the corridor leading down to the kitchens, and surveyed the dancers. She was thoroughly familiar with most of the castle’s garrison, but this was a fresh crop of officers, young faces and well-lined pockets, and with the evening growing late and the wine still flowing, she would be damned not to profit by it.

She stepped aside to let a servant pass with another tray of glasses and pulled the threadbare plaid around her shoulders, careful not to flaunt her gifts at the wrong moment. Much of her trade was a patient waiting game, and the handful of enterprising young girls who had not yet learned the lesson had been thrown out for a nuisance not long ago, to chase smaller prey around the clearings and harness-sheds.

Molly saw the Admiral’s secretary push his way through the crowd and quickly retreated into the shadows. Consummate hypocrite he was, she knew he would have turned her out in a trice. The young man walking behind him, however, instantly caught her eye. Lean, dark-haired and with the damn-your-eyes expression of the uninitiated about him, he wore an exquisite coat of bottle-green. She edged forward again, cautiously, and watched the unequal pair approach Admiral Portland standing with the colonel of the Regiment of Foot.

“Oh, you found him — Lieutenant Rankin, at last!” the Admiral cried, beaming. “Come, come, let me introduce you to Colonel McGrath — Colonel, this is the young daredevil you had the pleasure of witnessing today! Oh, the old _ruse de guerre_ — we used it to great effect against Boney when we were so short on Gibraltar, during the plague. With the smaller dragons, of course — nobody would mistake Laetificat, bless her.”

The old man’s eyes fairly glazed over with memory and hands were shaken all around, without much enthusiasm on the part of the lieutenant in the expensive coat, his pale eyes darting in the direction of the great pair of double doors leading out into the torch-lit staircase and down to the courtyard where the dragons lay sprawling, replete after their own feast.

 _Yes, why don’t you take the air, sweetheart,_ Molly thought as she picked her way along the dim-lit fringes of the party. Goodness, this boy could do with more than a little loosening-up. The very look of his tight-knotted cravat made her own breath choke, and in his painfully correct clothes, he stuck out like a sore thumb from the rest of the aviators.

Molly had a soft spot for aviators: estranged from wider society, they were grateful enough for company and did not generally feel the need to turn cruel on her and her sisters at Kinloch Laggan’s small but flourishing whorehouse. She had done well enough out of them, warm food on the table most days and a handful of men returning regular, but she would not delude herself. The garrison was in constant flux, her youth was fading, and she wanted a better life for her young daughters. They should not have to work as she did, so Molly put every penny aside for her dream: a passage on one of the great ocean-going ships, to the golden mountains of the Inca where people walked around dripping gold and jewels and nobody ever went hungry. She had heard the stories told, including the fearsome dragons guarding these riches, but that was no deterrent to a girl living in the shadow of a covert.

“What ho, Molly?” she heard a laughing voice behind her. “You’d better keep your hands off that one or you’ll scorch yourself.”

Molly turned, with warm feeling, to see Captain Horatio Laurence, no ignorant acquaintance. “Good evening, sir. — Why, who’d he be?”

“Lieutenant Rankin, the nephew of the Earl of Kensington. The greatest stuck-up blighter under the sun,” Captain Laurence sighed, tugging at his necktie with a pained expression. “I have a feeling this does not sit right, and old Simpkins is nowhere to be found… Molly, does it sit right?"

“I cannae’tell for the life of me, Captain,” she laughed, reaching out to touch the golden embroidery on his collar. “But my, what a splendid coat you’ve on!”

“You think so? Temeraire insisted I deck myself out, though I have precious little cause to celebrate. We were grounded today, wholly grounded!” he said, grimacing, and let go of the cravat knot to catch her hand. “Molly, I have a favour to ask. Will you put me on your card for later? Ten, shall we say, or eleven?”

“What, put you on me card as if I were some grand lady?” Molly said, laughing heartily at the notion.

“Yes,” he said, with a gloomy look around the room. “I don’t trust me with myself tonight. But here’s the rub, I haven’t anything to pay you just now. Do you think you could…?”

“Certainly, sir,” Molly nodded, and scolded herself the very moment she’d said it. “The once, for friendship’s sake,” she added, more sternly.

He let go of her hand. “No, no, I will not charge our friendship like that, never in my life. You could be turning a handsome profit all night, I know. I promise to pay up as soon as I come in the way of some money. — Oh, hell, the admiral’s beckoning… I shall have to speak to that Rankin fellow and praise his goddamn gallantry. I’d rather give up my sword thrice over again, I tell you… At eleven, Mademoiselle Murray, don’t you forget about me!”

“I shan’t, sir,” Molly said and watched him hurry away. He was the only soul who knew of her secret plans, and though he had not a word of Quechua, he had proposed teaching her French, claiming it was also spoken in the Incan Empire. Captain Laurence had never visited Cusco himself, but his former commander had, and shown him some detailed drawings. Over the course of several evenings, Molly had wheedled every detail out of him, golden temples and wide plazas and granaries filled to the rafters.

“Ah, _Mademoiselle Murray_? You know not to let ‘em have it for free, gal, lordling or no,” a rasping voice interrupted her thoughts: Agnes, the one of her colleagues she liked the least. “And don’t ye credit that sweet-talk of friendship… you cannae be friends with a fellow one day and suck his cock the next.”

"Quit poking your nose into my affairs, Agnes,” Molly snapped, and then checked herself. If anything, Agnes deserved pity. Two children dead from putrid throat and the third, a strapping boy taken into harness, knocked on the head during some accident aloft and returned to her dumb and mute, and his father at the covert wanting nothing more to do with him. The measly pension paid for a runner would not cover Agnes’ ends, nor her dashed hopes of living out her twilight days as the respected mother of an aerial officer.

“Touchy, are ye?” Agnes needled, crossing her bony arms. “Thinking yourself some higher order just ‘cause you got a captain in yer pocket, for all that mess of a face a’yours? — Has he made you any promises, eh? Do tell!”   
  
“No,” Molly said, calmly controlled. She’d be damned to let out a word of her relations with Captain Laurence. A man of his station could afford the reputation of a rake, but never that of an impotent who would sit by a girl in her nightgown and think of nothing else but to patiently impart what he knew of Quebecois French.

She had tried to make love to him, of course, when he had first come to Kinloch Laggan in the usual boisterous band of drunk new officers. She had thought it nothing more than fleeting acquaintance then — with his youth and looks, he would soon find a servant girl to warm his bed, and save himself the expense — though once the door had been closed, Molly had begun to wonder.

She was experienced in her trade, and still could not remember anything like the resigned patience with which he had endured her touch, or the way he had kept those bright blue eyes riveted to the water-stains on the ceiling when she’d mounted him. She had bent down to kiss him, place his hands on her breasts and whisper in his ear whether he would not say what occupied his pretty head to unman him so, and suddenly he had reared up and shoved her away, his face contorted in a savage frown and his hand flying up. Molly had curled up terrified, afraid he would beat her. But he had struck his own cheek, forcefully, and scrambled out of the bed, hands pressed to his temples as if something there tormented him, uttering, “Stop! Oh, just leave me!”

Molly had stared after him: she’d heard of this, people with demons in their heads, like mad old Sam in the village who had caught some pox in the war with the French and never been the same. The parson called it God’s punishment for immorality and overindulgence — by that score, Molly herself should soon expect to grow deranged. She had felt no pity then, only fear, but when he had made for the table with the single candle still burning and put his hand over the flame, she had rushed forward to snatch his arm away. “Stop doing that to yourself, sir! — I am sorry, I am sorry, only tell me what I need to do,“ and the commotion of it all had woken little Fanny in the next room.

“What?” he had asked, blinking at her as if rising from a night-terror. “What was your name? Molly? It is not your fault. It’s me, just me, I’m rotten inside.” He had stared down at the dancing flame. “Oh, I never thought to miss her so…” 

Molly had stood trembling, sickened at the sight of his blistered palm. “Perhaps you’ll win ‘er again, sir,” she had ventured, softly. 

“Oh, most definitely not,” he had snapped. “I could never ask it... To think of my father, or my poor brother…”, from which Molly had concluded his sweetheart must either be married, or as ineligible as she herself, her daughter still wailing in the next room. 

“Sir,” she had mouthed, cautiously, “may I, just for a moment-“   
  
“What? Why? — Is that your child? Why, yes, of course, bring him in.”   
  
Molly had been reluctant to take Fanny into the presence of a naked madman, but the girl was crying herself into a frenzy, and her older sister stirring also, so Molly had lifted her from the drawer that served as her bed and carried her in. “This is my daughter, Fanny.”   
  
He'd smiled at the snuffling child, “what a splendid name you have, Fanny!”, and added, with a look at the door, the din of his companions still faintly audible: “Will you let me stay the night, Molly? You may keep your payment, of course, and I promise you have nothing to fear. — Tell, do you play cards?” 

Molly had nodded, swallowing — what choice was there. 

They had spent the night at the table, with his burnt hand in a jug of cold water that forced him to spread his cards open on the table, though Molly had been too terrified to risk so much as a look. She’d kept an eye on the candle, but he had not seized it again or lashed out or done anything out of the ordinary, if anything about his behaviour could be called ordinary. Instead, he had told her stories of places he’d been with the dragons, Fanny settling back to sleep in her arms, until she shyly risked asking him about Cusco. Before he’d left in the morning, Captain Laurence had asked whether he might come again, to finish answering her questions — of course he would pay for her time — and she had nodded, whole-heartedly this time.

They had spent many such nights by now, practising French or playing cards or him entertaining the children while Molly pared apples or sewed, and when they went to bed and she put out the candle, he would lie against her arm and talk endlessly in the dark, of dragons and admirals and the service, while she listened to the ebb and fall of his voice more than any particular word: no use trying to understand his cares, as far removed from her own existence as the queen’s gilded palace. 

“No, Agnes, he’s not made me any promises,” she repeated now, when Agnes did not quit her stare. “I know me damned business, and l thank you for minding yours.” 

“Do you, though? That fellow over there’s been after you all evening and you hardly seem to notice,” Agnes said, pointing, and Molly’s heart sank to spy Lieutenant Garrick, who disliked the baths and smelt like a weasel. Well, she thought, nodding at Agnes and smiling sweetly at Garrick: She’d bear it, until eleven.

\- - 

“Sir, I had better go and check on Veloxia,” Stuart tried, in increasing desperation, when the admiral was done describing some action of the year six and would have returned to praising his feat. He was thoroughly fed up with all the attention by now, as though he had won a great battle instead of snatching a piece of blanket on a stick. The legend had already gained much in the ferals’ retelling out in the courtyard, the dragons given to overinflating both their own bravery and that of their enemy. To compound his vexation, the afternoon had been consumed by a strange set of games on the ground, dragons and aviators joining in the most ridiculous antics, tugging ropes, hurling stones or hauling about logs of larch. There had been no escape: wherever they went, Veloxia had been pointed out and cheered, a garland of heather hung around her neck, and she had flatly refused to have the mud-streaks washed off her hide, insisting instead that Stuart change his coat for something better, when she had overheard Temeraire tell his captain something of the sort. He had obeyed at last, with a sort of dark humour, thinking he might as well wear the useless dress uniform once before finally relinquishing the green of the Corps.

But Admiral Portland waved him off. “Nonsense, Rankin, you cannot deprive us of the hero of the hour,” and, sinking Stuart’s spirits even further: “Why, that is Captain Laurence over there. — Laurence! Come here! You’re damnably late.” 

Captain Laurence left his partner — a small woman of decidedly ill repute — to walk towards them, smiling. 

“I apologize, Admiral,” he said. “Temeraire took a long time to settle. He disliked it intensely, being grounded." 

“Well, I hope so did you, or I should fear for the fighting spirit of the Corps!” Portland exclaimed. “You yet owe me an explanation for six fighting dragons, two heavyweight, nearly losing out against — “ 

He did not get any further, a female laugh interrupting him, and a stout girl with frizzy brown hair struggling free of its braid shouldered her way through the crowd. “Lieutenant Rankin! There you are! I’ve been looking everywhere, but your beast told me you’d gone inside… I congratulate you, I congratulate you most heartily, that was some splendid flying today! — Oh, good evening, Admiral.” She curtsied to Portland, and Stuart stared at her double bars. 

“Well, we shall speak of this tomorrow,” Portland said, in a sudden hurry. “I will leave you young folks now. Enjoy what’s left of the evening, though I must ask your presence at eight in the grounds tomorrow, ready to drill.” He nodded and turned, drawing Colonel McGrath away by the arm. 

The girl groaned. “Oh, he’s angry, and rightly so. That was a right shambles today… I only wish he wouldn’t spare me.” 

“He's trying to spare the Colonel the shocking sight of you, Lucy,” Captain Laurence laughed. “Though I’ll take all the sparing I can get and two hours of sleep, and thank you kindly… Have the two of you met before? Rankin, this is Captain Lucinda Gallagher of Procella.” 

“Your servant, Miss- _Captain_ ,” Stuart corrected hastily, and bowed to hide his face. Of course he knew of the Corps’ female captains — a necessary evil, his father had called it — but he had never faced one at close quarters, and now could not help but be shaken. Out in the grounds, Captain Gallagher had worn her thick flying leathers, but she had shifted them for an evening coat now, making it impossible to overlook the curve of her belly, and Stuart hardly knew what to be more appalled at: her perfect lack of shame at her condition when he could spy no ring on her finger, or the fact that she was still permitted — asked, even! — to go aloft. “Do you— do you not want to sit down?” he managed. 

“Why, no,” she said, bemused, “I should prefer to stretch my legs a little, after all that flying.” She turned back to Captain Laurence. “Horatio, will you be a fine fellow and find us something to drink?” 

“Certainly,” he nodded and went away, leaving Stuart tense and unhappy. 

But Captain Gallagher did not seem to notice his unease. “So, Lieutenant, what were you thinking today?” she asked, smiling at him and taking the arm he had not offered. “My dragon is clamouring to be painted in mud, and so is half the formation. You’ve quite set a fashion.” 

He muttered an apology.

“Why, no, it’s just as well to have something to brighten the dear’s spirits — these exercises grow so dull and repetitive. But as today's example has shown, we have dire need o’the practice,” she sighed. “We’re for the India station once she's ready for a full complement, and they’re said to keep some right unpleasant dragons there.” 

“Surely they cannot mean to send you—“ he began, and broke off, glancing aside for rescue, which did not come. 

“No, of course not, damn them. I’d go any day, but they’re keeping my whole formation moored here, on account of this nothingness… you saw old Portland, they won’t listen to sense.” She shrugged. “Truth be told, I had no notion I was expecting when I pulled Prossy out of the shell, and good thing I didn’t, or they would not have let me near her, I swear… There’s never a good time, so far as their Lordships are concerned, and yet they will make it look like some damned professional responsibility. Have you any children yet? You’re of good old blood, aren’t you? — Yes, yes!” she cried, without waiting for reply, which was just as well. “I remember now. Your great-uncle was on Celeritas, and your father —“ She broke off, a shadow coming over her face. “Well,” she continued, soberly. “But then of course, everyone deserves a fresh chance.”

Stuart frowned, unsure how to account for this change in current. A heavyweight’s captain might of course look down on a middleweight like Caesar, but he found it hard to square such arrogance with the exuberant good humour she had so far displayed. “My father’s dragon is of no particular breed, but Caesar is a fine fighting-beast,” he said, woodenly. “I aspire to no other.”

“Caesar? Oh? Right, I see,” she said, looking away, and Stuart felt almost grateful when Captain Laurence rejoined them, balancing three glasses. 

“Sorry, I had to queue — will this do? They said there’s only a little rum in it.” 

Captain Gallagher took the glass, gingerly. “I’ll try.”

He sighed and handed Stuart a glass of the unavoidable sour wine. “It really is no fun with you anymore, Lucy. Care for a dance, then?” 

“If there is to be one,” she said, with a doubtful look at the musicians scratching away at their instruments, nearly drowned out by the general din. “You know, I wonder if that fellow dozing over there would let me have his fiddle.” 

“Oh, he most certainly will!” Captain Laurence said, put down his glass and hurried over to shake the man by the shoulder. He returned cradling the violin, beaming. “Listen up, Rankin! You’re in for a treat. Captain Gallagher could sell out the assembly rooms if she liked.”

“Only to make a spectacle of myself,” she said, rolling her eyes, but she accepted the instrument to clamp under her chin. “And what of you? Come, you must sing!” 

“No, no, I would not want to spoil-“ he began, blushing crimson for the first time Stuart had known him, but she laughed and tuned the fiddle with a few practised strokes.

“Nonsense! You could do it perfectly well last time we ran through it. There’s a G! Come now, that sweet little song your Molly taught us…”

"Which is no sweet little song, but some Jacobite balderdash, as you yourself pointed out-"

"Just so!" she grinned and brought the bow down with a flourish, a bright melody soaring. Captain Laurence still looked thoroughly embarrassed, but he folded his arms behind his back, cleared his throat, and when she finished the phrase and caught his eye, he started up, loud and clear:

“ _By yon bonnie banks and by yon bonnie braes,_  
_Where the sun shines bright on Loch Lomond,_  
_Where me and my true love were ever wont to go,_  
_On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.”_

Heads were turning before they had even finished the first verse, the chatter dying down: Captain Gallagher played with more spirit than he’d ever seen in a girl, but to Stuart’s ears, Captain Laurence was the real surprise. He possessed a fine singing-voice, carrying without strain and oddly shining in the light of the crowded room.  
  
“ _Twas there that we parted, in yon shady glen_  
_On the steep, steep sides of Ben Lomond_  
_Where in purple hue the highland hills we view_  
_And the moon coming out in the gloaming.”_

Stuart had heard that full airgoing voice before, of course, barking orders, but he would never have supposed it capable of anything so beautiful. Indeed he had never heard anything quite like it, full of melancholy and hope, entirely unlike the polished recitals he’d attended at the governor‘s mansion in Sydney. No-one around seemed unaffected, but instead of the reverential silence Stuart was used to from the concert-room, the audience here fell to clapping and cheering, whistling and humming along, a rising tide to turn sadness to joy, the flagging band stirring to take up the tune and even the dragons peering in from the courtyard when the guests raised their glasses to join in the resounding refrain:

_“Oh you’ll take the high road, and I'll take the low_  
_And I'll be in Scotland afore you_  
_But me and my true love will never meet again_  
_On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.”_

They repeated it and repeated it again, and Stuart wished the song would never finish. But it did, on a rousing cord and calls of “Well played!”, “Encore!”, and “’ware Vienna, Captain, or we’ll lose you to the opera!”. Stuart was applauding with the others by then, but he instantly checked himself when he became aware of it, the spell quite broken. Captain Laurence kissed Captain Gallagher’s cheek and both bowed to their audience, as Stuart forced himself to look upon the scene with cool reason, and scoff at the impropriety of it all — _and him the son of a peer._

The commotion had at last succeeded at drawing attention away from him, so he slipped away to the door, pushing his way past the loose women still loitering there, and jerked free when someone grasped his shoulder. “Take your hands away, you slut!” 

“On my word, Rankin, your candour gladdens my heart,” Captain Laurence said, letting go of him. “What are you about? Dishonourably quitting the field?” 

Stuart felt too angry to even blush for his blunder. “I see nothing to reproach _my_ honour for, sir.” 

Captain Laurence frowned. “Ah. Now if you will kindly remove whatever it is you’ve got stuck up your arse and come to dance, they’re finally making ready and we’re short one in our set. — You may make that an order, if it eases the passage.” 

Stuart stared at him, blankly appalled. “I am under no orders from you.” 

“No,” he sighed. “But Captain Gallagher sends me after you, what with her gentle heart. Surely it would be rude to refuse a lady?” 

Stuart would have liked to point out he did not count her a lady, but he would not debase himself by arguing, and only glared daggers at the other’s back as they made their way back to the floor. 

They were a slanted set, Captain Gallagher and the mulatto girl, whom Captain Laurence introduced as midwingman Dlamini, to the two of them and another two male officers from Procella’s crew. Lucy Gallagher seized his hand at once, cheeks still flushed with cheer, and he had no choice but to assume a place at her right side, Captain Laurence taking the left, and bow when the band struck up again. 

Then the dance commanded his every attention: not something he had come across before, more the thing for a servants’ row really. There were only six motions, repeated over and again, with stomping and clapping to boot and an exchange of partners between lines of three. He’d puzzled it out well enough after an initial stumbling round, but his attempts to discreetly swap places with another dancer during the sweeps produced nothing but confusion and hasty gestures of demurral, and straightening up again, he felt Captain Laurence’s eyes on him, mockingly. Stuart bit his teeth: clearly the man meant to make game of him, another piece of effrontery along with his covering up the mutiny and trying to force his resignation. But no, he decided with sudden defiance, he would not be quelled so easily. He could fence for his life, he could capture a flag and he had been sent to dance at the goddamned royal court. He too had spirit in his blood and life in his body, and he would no longer be carried along: he would own it. So when the dance threw them together again, joining arms to walk round the reel of three, he drew himself up and smiled in Captain Laurence’s face.   
  
“How well you dance, lieutenant!” Captain Gallagher exclaimed. “Do they play the _White Sergeant_ in Australia, too?”

“Perhaps the convicts or servants do at their balls, though I’ve never had the pleasure of attending,” he said, trying hard not to grin at the notion: his father would have pulled him out by the scruff of the neck, had he ever found him in such low company. Yet some part of him _enjoyed_ it all, the crash and din of the hall, the whistles and clapping, the informal and completely inappropriate mingling of stations and positions, and the more he smiled, the lighter he seemed to grow inside, beginning to wonder if were possible to be drunk on that single glass of bad wine. He did not even mind being repeatedly brought back into Captain Laurence’s company, whose face now bore an expression of strained equanimity. 

The music galloped to a close as the clock struck eleven, and in the short interval, Stuart found himself beleaguered and petitioned as a partner from three sides at once. He escorted Captain Gallagher to one of the benches, nodding politely to either side — no, regrettably, he was already spoken for for the next dance — and looked around, but Captain Laurence was nowhere to be seen. 

“Where on earth has Horatio got to?” Captain Gallagher said, shaking her head. “The coward — I had a mind to make him try another song before we break up. I swear he can make stones weep, if he cares to trouble himself. Ah well, another time. — Come, let me introduce you to Captain Galbraith, of Orion, over there. They’re all so keen to make your acquaintance.” She drew him away towards a knot of other officers, unperturbed at the desertion, and Stuart followed her, confused.

\- -

The next morning brought a humid heat, the midges descending in clouds when Stuart climbed down from Veloxia’s back at eight o’clock sharp in the training grounds. He waved a habitual hand before his face to dispel them and then stood uncertain. The captains were assembled in the shade of Laetificat’s wing, but he was not sure whether to approach direct. He was only a lieutenant.

Lucy Gallagher looked up and raised a hand to wave at him. “Good morning, lieutenant! You look shockingly awake,” she called out. “Step over here, the Admiral is giving out our orders.”

“Good morning, Captain,” he said when he’d walked over, embarrassed: they looked a tired and yawning bunch. He hadn’t slept much, either, the cords of the music clanging in his head long after he’d gone to bed in the small hours, making him tap his feet and smile at the darkness while Garrick snored away on his cot. Dawn had found him hurrying down to the loch to polish his boots, wash the blood-stains from his shirts and shave, working carefully around the scab on his throat before retying his stock to conceal it. Then he’d gone to check on Captain Lowe, taken his messages for Veloxia, and walked out to the clearings to wake the dragon, without the use of hobnails this time.

Admiral Portland did not seem in good humour, tapping his foot impatiently as he snapped at Lieutenant Ingram: “… whose Captain is excused on grounds of grave injury, but that is quite another matter! It will not stand! Who does he think he is?”   
  
“Sir, he did beg me to take command for the purpose of the exercise,” Ingram said calmly, with a certain gleam to his eye, and Stuart noticed Temeraire pacing tensely behind the other dragons, craning his head about with a searching air.

“What’s afoot?” he asked Captain Gallagher, low.

“Oh, just Captain Laurence making an ass of himself,” she whispered back, with an angry toss of the head. “He’s excused himself from the drill. I did not keep an eye on him later last night - do you think he drank overmuch?”

Stuart shook his head. “Has anyone been sent for him?”

“Lieutenant Ingram’s been to see him, he says, and been told to take the drill. But Horatio should know perfectly well that’s not how it works! You don’t stand up the admiral and his beast. Oh, he’ll do himself and his dragon such damage…” 

“Silence!” Admiral Portland roared. “Now to you, Lieutenant Rankin. Step forward. I will hear no more of that nonsensical request for discharge - count it declined, most vehemently so."

They all gaped at him. “You put in for discharge?” Captain Gallagher hissed behind him. “Why?”

Stuart stepped forward to bow, somewhat numbed. “May I inquire as to the reason, Admiral?”

“We cannot spare you, what with this muddle of a formation and people choosing to come and go as they please,” Admiral Portland said. “You will keep acting-command of Veloxia, if she will have you — I believe there was some noise about that, too, though my opinion of young Laurence has lately suffered... Where is the beast? Ah. — Laetificat, carry on as we discussed.”

The old Regal Copper rose to her haunches and padded over to Veloxia, who shrunk away from a dragon five times her own size.

“Pray tell me, Veloxia,” Laetificat asked sternly, “does Rankin treat you well?” 

“Oh, he does now,” Veloxia chirped, to add, with a touch of petulance: “Though he said I am not allowed to keep this.” She pointed a claw at the tartan plaid still knotted around her neck, having point-blank refused to let Stuart remove it, after all the good luck it had brought her. 

“Hmm,” the veteran dragon hummed. “But that does not look like our colours at all, and in any case, you are not of the highland regiment. It will confuse people. You should find something else. — Will you keep him for your lieutenant, then, and let him command for the period of your captain’s illness?” 

Veloxia hesitated and threw a glance at Stuart. He stood rigidly, unsure what to wish for. “I do,” she said, very small. “If he promises to be nice to my Henry, and let me see him as much as I like.” 

“That I can promise,” Stuart heard himself say, “but sir, I — I must speak to Captain Lowe before I accept, and hear his consent.” 

“I have spoken to him already,” Admiral Portland said, and drew him aside to add, low: “There’s a nephew in the West Indies station expected to take her on, but he’ll be three months and more to arrive, and it would be a damned shame to let her talents rot until then.” 

“Still,” Stuart said, “with all due respect, sir, I should like to make sure of it myself.” 

“Oh, if you must,” Admiral Portland growled. “But don’t you dare delaying us further — back here in a quarter-hour, or I will rethink my assignment. The rest of you, aloft! You will take your commands from Laetificat and build a proper defensive column, and — yes, _what is it,_ Temeraire?”

Stuart turned away to hurry back to Veloxia. “Take me to the castle, quick as you can,” he whispered to her, and waved the crew down.

She looked at him bewildered, but let him latch without protest, and shortly after, he jumped down in the castle’s courtyard to hurry inside, the now-familiar route up the stairs and into the bower.

He rushed past Captain Lowe’s door to stop outside Captain Laurence’s, raised a hand and knocked. 

First, there was nothing but silence. He carried on insistent, until he heard quiet steps on the other side. The door opened a crack, and Stuart was appalled to behold the small, bare-footed whore he had seen in the hall the previous evening. Her slanting brown eyes gave her the expression of a wary fox after one too many brushes with the hounds, and this impression continued for the rest of her person: a reddish sheen to her dark hair, and a broad ugly scar crossing the saddle of her nose. She might be twenty-five or thirty, Stuart thought, but then age was hard to tell in her fast-withering kind.

“Who is there?” Captain Laurence called out from the room.

“A lieutenant to see you,” she said, frowning at Stuart’s uniform.

Stuart cleared his throat. “Lieutenant Rankin, sir. Admiral Portland sends for you.” 

He heard a suppressed oath, finishing: “Go to the devil, Rankin! — Molly, shut that door.”

She attempted it, but Stuart got his boot in quick enough, and shouldered her aside to push his way in. “Beg pardon, Miss. — Oh, Christ!” he exclaimed, startled. “What has happened?”

Every part of the room was in disorder, one glass of wine spilled on the table and another giving every appearance of having been hurled against a wall, a litter of shards all over the floor. Captain Laurence stood unshaven, with his shirt untucked and half-buttoned, his hair disheveled and his eyes reddened as though he had not slept a wink. 

“Nothing!” he hissed, not a touch of beauty left in that hoarse voice now. “Get out at once, damn you!”

Stuart made a step back. “Right,” he said. “Is it true you want Ingram to lead the drill, then?”

“Ingram? What about him?”

“He says you told him to take command.” 

“Does he? Does he indeed?” Captain Laurence gave a bitter laugh. “Brilliant. Oh, let him have it. Let him have it all. I don’t care.” He picked up a bottle from the table, the lovely crystal decanter Stuart knew already, and hauled it onto the floor.

Stuart stared at him, with mounting indignation. “Are you not ashamed of yourself? Drinking, whoring, letting yourself go, and your dragon waiting for you? Goodness, he listens to you, he looks on you with pride and hope, he even had that coat made for you, I saw it in London… Do you have any notion what others would give, for half the chance—“ 

“I do,” Captain Laurence broke in, violently. “I do know what _others_ would give. Bloody shame nobody ever asked what I would-“ He interrupted himself, his face reddening. “Rankin, are you aware I could have you caned for this insolence? Coming here unbidden, forcing your way in, ignoring orders-“

“Oh, please do!” Stuart said, spreading his arms. “Carry on, if it makes you feel better about your own wretched self! But don’t you go lecturing me on the handling of dragons, if you prefer the company of sluts and deserters to that of your own beast!”

The colour all but drained from Captain Laurence’s face. His hand flew to his side for the lost sword, and finding none, he gave a low, strangled noise and flung himself forward, bare fists raised. He was the stronger-built of the two of them, but Stuart was better rested and wider awake, perfectly ready to parry the blow at his head and divert it, ducking aside as Captain Laurence stumbled over a piece of the wreckage on the floor and went down, hands forward into the litter of shards.

“No!” someone screamed, and the next moment, the little whore had jumped between them, barring the way when Captain Laurence pushed himself up to come at him again. “Stop! Please leave off!”

Stuart for his part had entirely forgotten her presence, and for a moment, they both blinked at her, confused. Then Captain Laurence groaned: “Molly, no! — Your feet… ”

His own hands were bleeding when he raised them, pulling a crystal splinter from the base of his thumb, but she stood bare-footed. He picked her up to carry her to the door, sweeping aside the broken pieces as he went, opened it and set her down in the corridor.

“You may go, Molly, thank you,” he said, turning. “You too, Rankin. Tell them I’m coming.”

Stuart blinked at him. “W- what?”

“Tell them I’m coming,” Captain Laurence repeated, his jaw set, and avoided his eyes. “No word to Temeraire, please, if you can help it… I will be ready in a trice.”

“Aye, sir,” Stuart said, bewildered, and walked out past him, over the crunching glass.

Captain Laurence closed the door behind him, and Stuart found himself in the dark corridor, next to the scar-faced woman.

“He said you may go,” he muttered. “So go! Get your feet seen to.”

“They’re not hurt at all, sir. I will go in just a moment, if you please,” she said, somehow contriving to make herself even smaller as she hunched her shoulders. “I just want to see him come out in one piece. I always worry he will do himself a harm. — He does not look it now, but I swear he has a good heart, sir. Please don’t go reporting him, sir, I beg-“

“Don’t you dare instruct me,” Stuart interrupted her, coldly. “Or I shall report _you._ I’m sure the admiral will not look kindly on your kind sneaking around these quarters. What is your name?”

“Molly Murray, sir,” she said, tonelessly.

“Very well,” he said. “I will make sure of his health myself. And now run along, Miss Murray, before anyone finds you here.”

She looked at him with open suspicion. “Promise, sir?”

“On my honour.”

“You won’t report ‘im?”

“I said, go!” he snapped.

She yielded, turning with a last imploring look to hurry down the corridor and disappear by one of the servants’ doors.

Stuart remained alone, pacing to and fro. Time was ticking, the Admiral’s patience running thinner by the moment, and he stood here wasting his own promotion, for a promise made to a harlot. He could not account for himself at all.

He turned sharply when the door was opened again at last, and Captain Laurence appeared — tolerably restored, as far as could be told in the dim light, a brushed coat, clean trousers and combed hair, and a kerchief wrapped around the palm of his hand.

“Rankin,” he groaned when he saw Stuart, “what business do you have loitering?”

“None, sir,” Stuart said, and would have bowed and turned, his promise fulfilled.

“Wait. One moment,” Captain Laurence called, striding up to him to pause abruptly, an arm's length away. “Why did you do this?”

Stuart paused, uncomfortably. “I… I wanted to thank you for the dance, sir,” he said.

A fleeting smile crossed Captain Laurence’s face, his cheeks flushed pink where he’d scrubbed them. He was still unshaven, thought Stuart thought this rather suited him. “Pleasure. — I meant to vex you, but I daresay you quite defeated me there. I’d never have thought you a gifted dancer.” He nodded at Stuart’s uniform. “You mean to carry on, then?”

Stuart nodded. “I do, sir,” he said. “In any case, the admiral refused my resignation, until Lowe’s nephew arrives.”

“Right,” Captain Laurence said. “So it cannot be helped… I will not ask for good fellowship, but I can promise to give you a wide berth, if you will do the same for me. I cannot speak for Temeraire — contrary to your charming observation, he and I rarely seem to agree on anything at all — but I can give you my word. Will you shake on that, lieutenant?”

Stuart frowned at him, and then took the bandaged hand offered him, as briefly as was proper. Captain Laurence nodded and would have gone away.

“Captain!” Stuart said, unable to hold back. “One thing, before I leave you in peace.”

He turned again, irritably. “What now, Rankin?”

“Your… tie,” Stuart said, wincing at the sight of it. “Please, will you let me do it up?”   
  



	11. Edinburgh

Admiral Portland and Laetificat worked them hard, in the unbroken heat: formation-flying, boarding drills and races. Veloxia excelled at the last in particular, so Stuart did not need to blush for their performance when they reassembled at the end of each day. However, after a week, the incendiaries were brought out again, and they were back in the old trot. Veloxia squalled and shied and fouled Orion’s wing on the first pass, and all Stuart could do was throw his coat over her eyes and ears and bring her around to land on a hillside, trembling. They were not summoned up again for the rest of the day, and Stuart cursed himself for having, ever so vaguely, hoped for a change, some stupid miracle from one of his books.

Captain Laurence, at least, kept his promise and did not reproach them — indeed he did not speak to them at all when they passed one another at the feeding pens, later that day, and walked away with Temeraire as soon as the dragon had completed his repast. Captain Gallagher joined Stuart between the fences used to drive the livestock into the pens, in her usual good humour, and set to questioning him about Australia while the dragons frolicked above, chasing their tails in the lengthening evening shadows. Stuart answered, haltingly, but his thoughts stubbornly circled back to the day’s failure: intolerable to carry on in such a fashion, and yet he could not work out a way to remedy the situation.

“You there! What do you think you are about?” Captain Gallagher shouted suddenly, startling him, and leapt over the fence-gate before Stuart had even recalled himself to the present. “Drive them away at once, damn you!”

The dragons pounced, a pitiful bleating noise, and Stuart saw a little shepherd boy peering out from behind a boulder. “My sheep broke away, Ma’am! I could not stop them.”

“And ran right onto our grounds, with all the smell of dragons? Nonsense,” she snorted, scowling. The child flinched, and she sighed. “This is no fashion to rid your family of your diseased stock! Next time you drive them here, it will be your loss alone, mark my words. — Prossy, you glutton! Come down at once. Did you eat this young man’s sheep?”

The young Longwing beat down and bobbed her head, abashed. She was four months out of the shell and had not yet reached her final growth, nor the full bony armour around her face, but her wingspan was already prodigious, if somewhat out of step with the rest of her body, giving her an awkward appearance when she walked on the ground, wing-tips dragging. “You should not have jumped over that fence, Lucy,” she rumbled. “The others say I must not let you run around at all, on account of the egg.”

“Not at all? Oh, quit it, you big child,” she grinned, patting her dragon’s nose, and in Stuart’s direction: “I do not relish the prospect of two of them on my hands, squealing and jealous.”

“Jealous? I, never,” Procella said, with an air of superiority. “Temeraire has told me all about eggs, and how I shall have to protect yours.”

“You may protect it all you like, once it’s hatched,” she said. “For now, you may act like a grown dragon and pay half your sheep, if you have not yet learned to reign in a hatchling's appetite.” She put a coin into the boy’s hand, and Procella drew a few scratches onto a piece of slate obligingly proffered by the shepherd, with an air of great concentration. “It’s only a few pennies, but it helps them learn the principle,” Captain Gallagher said to Stuart.

Veloxia landed a short distance away to watch Procella’s transaction, with rather a shamefaced expression, wiping at her bloodied snout with talons bearing telltale wisps of wool.

Stuart sighed. “Right, Veloxia, would you like to sign for yours?”

“I can’t,” Veloxia said, drooping. “I haven’t got a mark.”

“You don’t?” Procella said. “Why, you must ask your captain to see about getting you one. How else are you to spend your pay?”

“My pay?” she said, startled. “Why, my captain keeps it for me.”

“That is quite an antiquated way of going about things, you know,” Procella said. “Most people don’t take proper care of money. Temeraire says-“

“Shush, Prossy,” Captain Gallagher broke in. “Veloxia’s come from halfway round the world, and their customs are different. — Here, I am happy to give you credit,” she said, producing another shilling.

“Thank you, Captain,” Stuart said, embarrassed at his own empty pockets, and fixed it in his mind to take the matter up with Captain Lowe. He still found the whole idea of dragons in charge of their own funds ludicrous, but he did not want to see Veloxia ridiculed in front of the other beasts, further diminishing her spirits. Something might be contrived for the duration of their stay in England, and reversed upon their departure for Australia.

Captain Lowe agreed at once, when Stuart laid the scheme before him after dinner. “It does make a damned amount of sense, giving the dragons some ambition of their own,” he said. “I daresay we would have had something of the sort put in place in Australia, had the Commander not disagreed. — Anyhoo, there is an office in London, and one in Edinburgh, what deals with such matters. I suppose you will want to go to London?”

Stuart shook his head. “I’ll take her to Edinburgh, on my next day of leave.” Contrary to what Lowe might imagine, he had very little desire to call on his uncle or cousins, and he had already written to London to direct his small funds to the Royal Bank, giving him something to draw on to settle his Laggan mess-bills and a few debts still outstanding from London: he would not have his uncle complain of him on that score.

“Very good,” Captain Lowe said, already nodding off in his chair. Blythe was liberal in his doses of brandy and laudanum. “Come to think of it, Captain Laurence mentioned something about going. You can fly together, and give one of the dragons a rest. You’re of an age and of good families both. You’ll have a splendid time together.”

Most certainly not, Stuart thought as he said his good night, and then thought no more of it, so he was thoroughly startled when, on the day the Admiral had fixed for their trip, he found Captain Laurence waiting in Veloxia’s clearing.

“I have come to beg the favour of a passage,” he said, without meeting Stuart’s eyes. “I have some pressing business in the city, but the admiral would not approve me taking Temeraire out for a day. He said I might accompany you. — If I am putting you out, you may refuse, of course,” he added, quickly.

“Not at all, sir,” Stuart said, confused. Captain Laurence had come in civilian garb, the usual courtesy of peacetime travel aboard another man’s dragon, especially one of lower rank, so as to not upstage the handler, but the transformation was startling. Without the formal splendour of his green coat and golden bars, he looked a good deal younger, and oddly costumed in that gentleman's coat and hat. “Veloxia, look, we have a passenger,” Stuart said to the dragon, hastily turning away to state the obvious. “You must give us a good speed to Edinburgh.”

“Oh, I will!” Veloxia promised, standing to smart attention.

Captain Laurence nodded, thanked her, and latched on silently.

They hardly exchanged any words during the three hours’ flight, beyond a few platitudes on the weather — the summer heat pleasant while aloft and going at speed — and the fine prospect of the Firth of Forth once it came into view. Stuart would have made for the covert distinguished by its flag, at the edge of the city, but Captain Laurence pointed out a landing ground in a public park, in the shadow of Edinburgh castle on its volcanic monolith.

“It doesn’t belong to the Corps, but it’s much more central,” he said and climbed down while Stuart looked around amazed: The descent of a dragon into central Sydney would have caused a stampede and a torrent of complaints, but here, nobody seemed to mind much. A few children trundling hoops were snatched up by their nurses and hurried away from the dragon, but this was the extent of the attention afforded them. A vendor roasted chickens in perfect view of the dragons, and a little girl dressed in rags hurried up with a bucket of water and a brush. Captain Laurence put a farthing into her dirty palm as he drew out his watch, absent-mindedly. “Does four o’clock suit you, lieutenant? I’ve some business at the bank, and a gentleman to see. ”

“Yes, perfectly,” Stuart said.

“Good. — Could you… would you mind?” he said, pointing at his necktie with an embarrassed expression.

Stuart nodded, more than glad to remedy the situation — he had not dared mention it. Captain Laurence thanked him, when he was done retying it, and took his leave.

Veloxia lapped the water from the girl’s bucket, her attention fixed on the chickens. “You shall have one later, when I return, if you promise to be a good dragon and not stir,” Stuart told her, and she nodded and promised it.

He wandered along the streets awhile, marvelling at the great number of bookshops and printing-presses, and the back roads where the dragons walked — muddy and dank, but crossing the middle of a city no less, something utterly unthinkable in Australia — before recalling himself to his purpose. He had to ask for directions to the Bureau of Draconic Affairs, and finally found it situated in a soot-blackened and crumbling building in one of the more circumspect parts of the town, near the university’s faculty of anatomy.

The clerk dozing behind the counter was affable enough, however, once Stuart had roused him. “I'm surprised to see you here, lieutenant! I thought all the Corps' dragons were on our list by now," he said, shaking his bald head, and opened the big ledger of draconic signatures in which he was obliged to check whether the mark Stuart had proposed for Veloxia — a simple spiral and three dots, like the pattern Ensign Gordon had drawn the other day — was already taken. Stuart did not reply, too busy stealing glances around the room: shelves of books and papers, maps in dusty frames on the walls, and a faded coronation portrait of the late King William above the door, not yet exchanged for his young niece’s.

"I see you have noticed my collection," the clerk said, with a certain pride. "Do have yourself a wander, if you like, this will take a wee while... We’re under no obligation to keep the old papers, but I do as an interest a’mine. An archive of dragonkind in Scotland, I call it.”

“Prodigious,” Stuart said, rising from the hard chair to walk to one of the shelves. The contents were in no particular order, many of the titles and pencil labels indecipherable in the dim light, but a faded leather-bound volume titled “Laggan Covert” in faded gilt drew his attention, even more so when he pulled it out to see a magnificent firebreathing dragon embossed on the cover. The contents, however, were more prosaic: columns of names and numbers, the comings and goings of beasts from the covert, with dates going as far back as the sixteen hundreds. He flicked through it, and paused abruptly when he saw the name _Temeraire, 1st rate/ Chinese Imperial. Cpt. W. Laurence_ , in 1805, and, shortly before, _Levitas, Courier/ Winch. Cpt. J. Rankin_.

He stared at it. Surely this was a mistake, he thought, paging back more carefully. _Celeritas, 2nd rate/ Mal. Reaper. Cpt. C. Rankin,_ 1779 — his great-uncle Cassius, that date fit, and back even further, _Celeritas, Cpt. R. Rankin_ , 1752, who might well have been his great-grandfather whose first name he could not recall.

“Sir,” he said to the clerk, “have you found these records to contain errors, before?”

The man looked up. “Why, no. It is not like I can much tell, but I daresay the Corps knows its dragons.”

Stuart tapped the page, impatiently. “Well, it appears they don’t. My father’s dragon is called Caesar, not Levitas, and he bloody isn't a Winchester.”

“Indeed?” the clerk said. “Well, ’tis fortunate dragons live so long. You can find some of his fellows still in the service, and ask them.”

Stuart snorted, glaring at the page from 1805. _Temeraire._ If only it were as easy as that. He shut the book and put it back onto the shelf, suddenly impatient. “Will this take much longer?” he snapped.

“Oh, no,” the clerk said, mildly. “You are in luck, lieutenant. There’s a dragon in the Yorkshire Dales that signs a similar hand, which you ought to bear in mind — otherwise, I see no reason to refuse it.” He dipped his pen to add a new entry for Veloxia, and sign and stamp the slip of paper Stuart was to take to the bankers, tediously slowly. Stuart snatched it up before it had been blotted, turned and made for the door, suddenly infinitely glad to be released from that dusty cave.

\- -

In the fashionable New Town, Horatio Laurence walked past facades of polished grey stone, a sense of oppression growing with every step. He did not mind the stench of the city — he had been on midden-duty often enough — but he felt trapped and caged in the geometric grid of the streets, people hurrying by in a purposeful stupor, never looking right or left. His hand kept straying to his neck to loosen the damnable tie, but each time he checked himself: he would never manage to retie it as neatly as Rankin had done, and he did not wish to arrive looking a scrub.

He reached the address on the letter in his pocket — _I shall entrust the papers to an old acquaintance of mine who lives at Moray Place, to be collected at your Leisure_ — gave his name and was let in by a liveried servant, who told him he was in luck, as “the admiral arrived only this morning”, before hurrying away to announce him. Horatio was left puzzled and dismayed: The gentleman owning the house was a former navy man to be sure, a parliamentary friend of his father’s, but he was fabulously busy as all these great men were, and Horatio had not asked to be received. He would much rather have collected his papers and the much-needed cheque and departed this cursed chessboard of a city, without suffering through polite small-talk.

The owner of the house had done well in his service by the looks of his front hall, all expensive, restrained elegance, rather putting Horatio in mind of his uncle’s estate at Wollaton. How he had dreaded the family visits there: aware enough of society’s unwritten rules to know himself lacking, but, by dint of his Corps upbringing, both unable and unwilling to put them into practice. Lieutenant Rankin would like it here, he thought as he sat down on a delicate-legged chair, what with his perfect dress, polished speech, and the infuriating precision with which he ate, never spilling a drop. Perhaps he should have brought Rankin along and passed him off as Captain Laurence — it would certainly have left a better impression.

But the impossibility of such a scheme became clear as soon as the servant appeared again, announcing: “The Admiral will see you directly," his face expressing quite clearly what he thought of such informal arrangements when there was a perfectly serviceable parlour at hand, only to be gently but firmly pushed aside by a grey-haired, broad-shouldered gentleman who exclaimed: “Heavens, son, what is this? Have you pawned your uniform?”

He said it lightly, the blue eyes smiling, but Horatio nevertheless shot up from the chair as though bitten, utterly taken aback: Admiral Laurence was the last person he had expected to meet with today.

“Father!… Sir, I mean, I — I am happy to see you! What a coincidence! What brings you to Scotland? Your letter said-“ he began and tailed off, embarrassed. He had three inches on the other, having been, at Iskierka’s insistence, better fed during the period of growth and ravenous appetite that his father had spent on rats and ship's biscuit, but Admiral Laurence had a way of commanding a room, carrying himself as though on a quarterdeck, that always made Horatio feel small.

“I know,” Admiral Laurence said now, walking over to clasp Horatio’s hand. “And I hope not to be too unpleasant a surprise. I did not plan to come up this year, but parliamentary business called me to Leith Port. — What of you? Are you eating properly? You look very pale.”

Horatio hastily shook his head. “Yes, yes, sir, I am well — perfectly well.”

“And how does dear Temeraire? May I see him?”

Horatio instantly felt even more wretched. If only he had come here in his uniform, if only he had not been relegated to another man’s dragon… he doubted Admiral Portland even knew the depth of humiliation his punishment had inflicted. “Ah, you see — he is back at Laggan, father. I am so sorry! Admiral Portland would not give both of us leave, so I… I have come with one of the smaller beasts. If I had known you were here, I would of course — … In fact, I don’t think the admiral would object if we took you-“

Laurence’s smile dimmed, just a little, his shoulders falling. “No, no, never mind. It is one thing to spend some time on a leave-day, and quite another to blunder into a training covert and interfere. — How are the two of you settling in with the formation? You write volumes of nothing… Have you had your orders yet?”

“Tolerably well, sir, though no, we have not been assigned. Admiral Portland is still prodding to find out how to best use us, I gather,” Horatio said, and, in an effort to change the topic: “How does mother — Admiral Roland, I mean? And Little Will?”

“Very well indeed, both of them, though as for your brother, I have no notion what starts he is getting up to presently. It was old dragon bones last time we met, and Babylonian runes before then… I have no patience for it. He has a fine mind, but he chooses to waste it. To think he could be a bishop, or a justice of the peace, if only he applied himself...”

Horatio looked at him sideways. He himself only ever thought of his twin brother with the warmest affection, yet the notion of that scrawny, irreligious young man in a bishop’s robe or a judge’s wig was frankly ridiculous — yet Laurence had spoken with conviction. Sometimes, Horatio wondered whether the many years in parliament had changed him.

“What brought you to Leith Port, then, father?” he asked.

“Some unpleasant business, best not spoken of here…” Laurence said, the shadows on his face deepening. “Will you walk a turn with me? I must beg you not to concern Temeraire with it, just yet.”

The servant, summoned again, brought the admiral’s hat and coat and opened the door for them, with many bows, but Laurence only spoke again when they were walking along a deserted side-street, at the brisk pace he set them.

A peculiar case had lately been heard in the London courts, concerning a group of merchant sailors. "The poor devils stood accused of desertion, for refusing to come aboard their ship,” he said. “They swore under oath they had not done so out of greed or slovenliness, but because the vessel in question was unfit to carry even half its load. — Turn into that lane there, it is a short cut.” He pointed into an even narrower passage, running along a canal.

“Unfit to carry its load?” Horatio asked, confused. “Surely a ship’s owner must have an interest in his vessel and its cargo reaching its destination.” They had left the New Town behind, the tenements growing steadily more dilapidated, and had to duck under washing lines criss-crossing the canal. A crowd of skinny children played in the mucky water, unsupervised, and Horatio was suddenly glad for his lack of a gold-trimmed uniform, which should surely have drawn attention.

“That is the most wretched part of it,” Laurence said, quietly. “The cargo in question, if you will call it so, consisted of human souls — people who have already paid for their passage, and whose lives are therefore of little concern to the shipowners, who will try to cram as many as possible belowdecks… I scarcely believed the charges made, but I have gone to see one of the ships they named, the _Harriet_ moored at Leith, and found the worst confirmed — old, squalid, and entirely unseaworthy. And she is not the only one.”

“But why would anyone subject to such a passage?” Horatio asked. He had seen immigrants entering Quebec, even escorted them inland as part of Iskierka's duties, but those had been, so far as he could tell, respectable people, sent to populate the wilderness and arriving hearty. “Surely if word of the practice got out-“

“Even then, they would find takers. Their is much poverty and despair in the land,” Admiral Laurence said. “And through no small part…” He broke off, shaking his head. “No, no, I would not undo a thing. And yet... in some Northern towns, they will fie our names… Sometimes I am glad Temeraire is not here to witness it. The landlords and factory owners turn the people out and abuse them to wring profits, but it is easy to lay the blame on the dragons. Of course a dragon can haul more coal than ten men in a day, or till more soil… but even a dragon’s labour will soon be nothing next to the machines they are constructing, and then-“

“Watch out!” Horatio shouted, and tried to push him aside, but it was too late: A man had jumped into the path in front of them, a second slid down from one of the low roofs, and a third cut the way off behind them, to seize Admiral Laurence and put a knife to his throat.

“Hand over your money,” he snarled, “or something'll happen to the old man!”

How perfectly ridiculous, Horatio thought. Was this what happened to civilians any day?

His veteran father was unimpressed in any case: pushing the knife away from his neck with one hand and dealing a backward blow with the other, with enough force to make his assailant howl and stumble backwards, hands clapped over a nose spurting blood. Horatio flung himself at the second thief to knock him down and divert the cudgel aimed at Laurence’s head. But the third man was already on him, driving a knee into his belly with all force when he would have wheeled around, to stretch him out on the grimy cobbles. Horatio blinked, gasping with pain, and strained his head up to see the ugly outline of a blade in the robber’s hand as the man strode towards Admiral Laurence who was still grappling with the bloody-nosed man, his back utterly exposed. Horatio scrambled to his feet and reached inside his coat, fingers fumbling in the unfamiliar pockets — _God, his belly hurt_ — to finally close around a cool, reassuring hilt, and he ripped out his service-pistol.

“Leave off at once or I will blow out his brains,” he said, his voice habitually sharp despite his aching guts and racing heart as he grasped the robber's collar and put the pistol to the man's temple. He felt the man freeze, saw the bloody-nosed one stare and leave off, and then heard the knife drop onto the cobbles with an unmelodious clanging. He kicked it into the putrid canal. The men backed away.

“Put down your weapon, Horatio. — Away with you!” Admiral Laurence snapped at the robbers, and they nearly stood to attention before remembering to turn tail and flee.

“But — why, father?” Horatio groaned. “We could have taken them to the constabulary!”

“To be hung or transported? Nonsense,” Laurence snorted. “Why business do you have carrying a pistol in the middle of the bright day? Has Granby not taught you better sense?”

“It was not loaded!” Horatio protested, clicking the trigger for proof. He felt the tone of reproach somewhat unfair, given the circumstances. “I travelled here with one Lieutenant Rankin, so I thought it best to be cautious. — Though I would’ve shot that villain, gladly, for calling you an old man," he added, sullenly. He did not truly expect even Rankin to try and shove him off mid-air, but then, he could hardly have told Admiral Laurence that he felt uneasy without at least one thing reminding him of the Corps, of who he was.

“Hmm." Laurence picked up his hat and then knelt down next to the third of the gang who still lay on the ground, unmoving, to feel his pulse. “I suppose I am growing old after all. They would have had me there, without your help. Much obliged. — Come, lend a hand, quickly.”

“What?” Horatio said, staring. “You cannot mean to…?”

Laurence blinked up at him. “We cannot leave him here.”

“What? — Do you suppose he’ll be robbed?” Horatio exclaimed, but one stern glance from Laurence stifled any further protest he might have made. He sighed, tucked away the pistol, and knelt down next to the emaciated figure — dirty as a rat, and smelling worse. The man’s eyelids fluttered and he gave a confused groan when they pulled him to his feet.

“Good,” Admiral Laurence nodded, satisified. “We’ll take him to the next inn. — So, did you mention a Lieutenant Rankin? A relation of the Earl of Kensington's? That man has been at our throats throughout the last parliamentary season, the most hard-bitten enemy of draconic emancipation to sit the House, though Heaven knows it has not stopped his lot from keeping dragons.”

“No, more's the pity,” Horatio said as they set off again, slowed by their burden. He threw an uncomfortable look over his shoulder. “Father… I really hope you will not think me shy, but… cannot we take a different road?”


	12. Levitas

When Horatio returned to Princes Street Gardens, he found Veloxia napping and Rankin next to her reading a book, though on his approach, the lieutenant looked up, tucked it away and rose to his feet.   
  
“At last! Come up, Veloxia, we must make haste,” he snapped by way of greeting, his pale eyes darting from Horatio’s clothing — smeared with street-refuse and no doubt still crawling with a few of the robber’s lice — to the clock of St Cuthbert’s church showing an undeniable half past six, and finally the sky. The western horizon looked ominously dark, tall wisps of cloud gathering.   
  
“I am sorry,” Horatio began. “I had to—“ and then stopped, sharply. He owed Rankin neither explanation nor apology, so he climbed up in silence and stowed his purchases: a bundle of books and a small plywood dragon that flapped its wings when one pulled on a string, which he thought Molly’s daughters might like.   
  
He was surprised to find Veloxia well rested and evidently even fed, the tidy lowland pastures rushing by at impressive speed once they were aloft. Still the freshening gusts of wind became impossible to ignore some thirty miles north of Stirling, the swallows coasting low through a reddish, sultry dusk. The clouds stood tall as a wall now, and from within came the low rumbling of thunder.  
  
“Down, Veloxia. — No, she cannot go on in a thunderstorm,” Rankin said with finality when Horatio would have protested. 

“Right. So we will just sit in this valley, when another hour would’ve seen us home. Brilliant,” Horatio muttered, annoyed. He longed for a bath and felt a gnawing guilt at the thought of Temeraire not only missing the afternoon with Laurence, but also left alone for the night; a sentiment he might have palliated with the books strapped to Veloxia’s harness. Back in credit, he had bought them at one of the Edinburgh printers, from the list Temeraire had made according to his brother’s letters. There was a new copy of _Philosophia Botanica_ by Linnaeus and an illustrated edition of Euclid’s _Geometry_ , the thought of either of which sent a cold shiver down Horatio’s spine. The world of books was one from which he felt entirely excluded.   
  
“There is a house over there,” Rankin said, unmoved, and pointed at a roof nestled between tall rhododendron bushes at the end of the glen. “Only we must walk to it.”

Horatio cursed.  
  
Raindrops were falling by the time they reached, heavy and cold and whispering on the leathery leaves. The building was handsome, with a freshly-painted half-timbered gable, and peering in through one of the windows, Horatio saw a well-appointed sitting room.   
  
“Some gentleman’s hunting lodge. — It might be empty,” he added, hopefully.   
  
It was not, however: A groundskeeper opened the door when they knocked, restraining a growling dog by its collar. “What do ye want?”  
  
Rankin straightened up. “How dare you address an officer of-“   
  
“Oh, shut it, Rankin,” Horatio said hastily, stepping forward. “Sir, we’re for Laggan Covert, but our dragon cannot fly in this storm, so we must beg you to let us take shelter until it has blown over.” He reached into his pocket to produce a silver shilling. “Perhaps you can spare us some food, and a little room in your parlour?”   
  
The man’s expression softened at the sight of the coin. “Right. Well, no party’s stayin’ at present. Come in, then,” he muttered. “Yer beast must make do with the skinning-shed out the back — ’tis empty.”   
  
“Much obliged. We’ll take her to it straight away,” Horatio said and drew an indignant Rankin away by the arm, back into the rain now drumming down steadily.   
  
“What a miserable hole,” he observed when they had reached the shed. The rafters were empty of deer carcasses, but the smell of blood clung to the beams and emanated from the wood chips strewn on the floor. “Certain you don’t want to fly on? We’ll be home and dry in—” 

Behind him, a vein of lightning shot through the sky, throwing the shack’s every gap and mortise into sharp relief, followed by crashing thunder. Veloxia gave an anguished whimper and wound herself into a ball, tucking her head under a wing.

“Quite certain,” Rankin said.

Horatio jumped to Veloxia’s side to save Temeraire’s expensive books from being crushed and then helped Rankin undo her harness, an awkward endeavour when she was not in the least cooperating. He was stumped. For all he knew, dragons had no inborn terror of noise or light. Some even enjoyed it. As children, he and his brother had been surprised by a similar summer storm while playing explorers in the Peaks with Temeraire, and the dragon had ploughed through undaunted to deposit them back on Mr Tharkay’s doorstep, the storm paling by comparison with the dressing-down they’d earned from their father. Iskierka had been similarly irreverent of the elements, once proposing to fly straight into the eye of a pacific typhoon to look for any ships caught in it, pointing out, reasonably, that the riches they carried would be of no use to anyone once they had sunk to the bottom of the sea. He had half-entertained the notion of taking her, secretly — it would have been the grandest thing to finally claim something akin to a prize — but he'd only been a midwingman of sixteen and could hardly have crossed Admiral Granby, his godfather and the man he most respected in the world.   
  
“What is it with her?” he asked when they finally had the main buckle loose and, with united effort, pulled the harness out from under her.   
  
“Captain Lowe says she was lighting-struck and has been like this ever since,” Rankin said, thin-lipped, and turned away to drape the straps over one of the rafters.

Horatio stared at him. “And he allowed her to be assigned to rockets?”   
  
Rankin pulled out a tidy handkerchief to wipe rainwater off the straps, without meeting his eyes. “My father ordered him to.”   
  
“What?” Horatio exclaimed. “But whyever did he do such a thing? Setting her up to fail? That is no use to anyone!”   
  
“It is a… long story,” Rankin said, still determinedly tidying the harness.   
  
Horatio shook his head and stepped to the rough-hewn door. The keeper had lit a lamp in the lodge’s parlour, the warm glow inviting behind the curtains of rain.

“Go and sit warm and dry, by all means,” Rankin said, raising his chin. “I’m sorry for keeping you moored on her account.”

Horatio spun around. “You’d like that, eh? Be left alone so you can devise some punishment?”

Rankin glared at him and let go of the strap, to stride to Veloxia’s side and tap a hand on her trembling wing. “Veloxia,” he said, loudly. “Veloxia, look here.”

“Don’t you dare,“ Horatio growled, stepping forward. He would not let Rankin threaten and berate the poor beast. But Veloxia’s wing-tip lifted a little, and Rankin drew out a slip of paper, unfolded it, and held it before her gleaming eye.

“There,” he said, unmoved. “Your mark.”

Horatio stopped dead. Veloxia blinked at the paper. “My mark?” she whispered. “My mark, just like the others have?”

Rankin nodded. “I checked at the bank. You have one hundred and eighty-six pounds to your account. In cows, that would mean …” He broke off, calculating.

“Do I?” Veloxia said, her wing drawing back further. “So I… I can pay you for the chickens, and Procella’s captain also, and I will still have one hundred and eighty-five pounds, ten shillings and sixpence?”

Rankin stared in blank surprise, and Horatio found himself grinning as she uncurled herself further to add, in faintly indignant tones: “But why were those chickens in town more expensive than a whole sheep in the hills? That does not sound fair at all.”

“Ask Adam Smith,” Horatio chuckled before turning to the lieutenant. “You see, Rankin, dragons are quite the sticklers for money. She’ll keep her accounts in better snuff than we do, you may count on it. The whole system of marks would not work otherwise. Temeraire tells me there were a few rascals trying to forge them in the beginning, but not for long… nobody likes to borrow trouble with a dragon.”

To his credit, Rankin recovered quickly, swallowed and nodded. “Yes, Veloxia… As I said, the money is yours to spend whichever way you like — that is, Captain Lowe begs me to tell you that it is.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you, _thank you_! Will you draw my mark bigger, so I can learn it straight away?” Veloxia piped. She sat up almost straight now, neck and shoulders stooping under the low roof, and almost forgot to flinch at the next bout of thunder.

Rankin squatted down to trace a spiral and three dots into the dirt of the floor, Veloxia’s blunt snout following his fine-boned hand, and Horatio swallowed, his amusement abruptly gone. To see Rankin like that, with all that unexpected, reluctant grace, a kindness that asked nothing in return and would rather not be seen for what it was, gave him a painful sting. Before they’d parted in Edinburgh, he had promised Admiral Laurence to keep an eye on Veloxia and to remind Temeraire to guard her too, against any fresh cruelty Rankin might attempt. But seeing Veloxia nosing at her mark, nearly bursting with pride, while Rankin waved off her thanks and quickly straightened up again, Horatio was beginning to doubt who was the one with the unhappy dragon.

“I will make some light so you can see it properly,” Rankin said absently, reaching for his damp flying-coat thrown over the rafter next to the harness. It thumped to the floor, heavily, and the small book he had been reading in Edinburgh tumbled out of one of the pockets. _Robinson Crusoe,_ said the faded and stained linen cover.

“What is this?” Horatio asked, picking it up to flick it open. “You like reading, Rankin? — On my word, you’ve even underlined bits in pencil! What have we here… _But my ill fate pushed me on now with an obstinacy that nothing could resist, and though I had several times loud calls from my reason and my more composed judgment to go home, yet I had no power to do it. I know not what to call this, nor will I urge that it is a secret overruling decree, that hurries us on to be the instruments of our own-_ ”

“I never!” Rankin snapped, high colour showing on his sunburnt cheeks as he snatched the book away, and before Horatio could protest, he had seized a handful of pages and torn them out to crumple on the floor. He pulled a flint and striker from one of the coat’s pockets, a shower of sparks, and the paper caught like tinder.

“Very well… kindling, then,” Horatio muttered, unconvinced, and watched Rankin bank the fire and feed it with paper and woodchips. He pointed at the striker. “How did you get it to catch so quickly? … I’m useless at it myself, too impatient. I’ve grown rather spoiled on Iskierka. She’d set a tree alight in a trice… But that striker would be a damned sight easier than ringing for old Simpkins and watching him struggle and curse with his damp matches.” He shook his head, and quipped: “I can offer a prime copy of the _Wealth of Nations_ , if you’d care to teach me?”

Rankin stayed stonily silent, and Horatio could not muster a smile, either, staring down at the lively flame. He nodded at Veloxia. “Well, she looks better now, but we shouldn’t leave her alone. I’ll fetch our dinner here, and then you will tell me that long story of yours. — No, no, I demand to hear it and,” he cast a look out into the gloom, “it looks like you’ve all night to tell it.”   


\- -

  
“ _Five thousand pounds_?” Captain Laurence exclaimed. “Rankin, you bloody fool! Whyever did you not agree?” 

Veloxia’s ears flicked in their direction and Stuart fixed him with a pointed stare. “If I told you I did not love her,” he hissed, “would that count for a reason?”

Horatio Laurence looked doubtful, but he duly lowered his voice. “No… no, I won’t swallow that. What is there not to love in five thousand pounds?”

Stuart pressed his lips together and looked away, and after a while, Captain Laurence shrugged and picked up the bottle of whisky he had brought back from the lodge, alongside the stew-pot that stood empty on the floor between them.

The storm still raged, but Veloxia was calmer now, busily tracing her mark in the dirt by the warm glow of the fire. Stuart had meant for Lowe to present it to her, and could not quite say what had possessed him to do it here, himself. He also regretted the sacrifice of the book — he would dearly have liked to know whether Crusoe ever made it off that desolate island — but his father had always called novels the dissipation of a feeble mind, and it would not do for Captain Laurence to think him feeble, already an unsettling possibility. Over the course of the meal, he had let down his guard and spoken more words together than ever before in his life, of his uncle’s wish to have his natural daughter married and taken overseas, and of his father’s and Caesar’s desire for money, so little Veloxia had been sent in a hurry aboard the only suitable ship in harbour. Being pronounced a _bloody fool_ was not quite what he had looked for, after being so candid — but then, it was his own fault for addressing himself to his enemy.

“No, Rankin,” Captain Laurence said, glancing at him over the rim of the bottle. “You didn’t do it because it insulted your pride… being used for other people’s ends, giving up control of your own destiny. That is how I would have felt about it, in any case… That is how I should have felt.”

Stuart looked up alarmed. “You’re not married, sir, are you?”

“Heavens, no, that’s not what I mean,” Captain Laurence said, setting the bottle down with sudden violence. Time trickled away, the rain rushed down, Veloxia’s claw scraped the earth, and Stuart turned to tend to the fire.

“Can I ask you something, in confidence?” Captain Laurence said suddenly, behind him.

Stuart shrugged.

“Do you ever feel like an actor upon a stage, through an accident of birth, playing a part that disgusts you?”

Stuart froze. “Sir, I... I don’t think I understand your meaning.“

“I think you do,” Captain Laurence said, flatly. “So pray put aside that stupid _sir_ for a moment, turn around and answer me.”

Stuart did so reluctantly and kept his eyes on the half-empty bottle, amber in the firelight. “Yes.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes, I do,” Stuart said. “Quite often, in fact.”

Captain Laurence smiled. “I thought so. You are not so very different from me, what with your father in command and that beast of his-”

“That is not what I meant!” Stuart broke out, angry to have his words twisted and suddenly, acutely aware how ridiculous he must look. “I am nothing like you. I don’t go lying with whores, or wrecking my room, or—” 

“So?” Captain Laurence said. “You go wrecking other things. Dragons, people-“ 

“Be quiet!” Stuart hissed. 

“- and congratulate yourself on the righteousness of it, just like your father did with Levitas. Don’t think you can fool me. One small act of decency don’t undo the way you treated Veloxia and her crew at Monar.“ 

Stuart jumped to his feet. “I’m not trying to fool you — why should I? Don’t flatter yourself! And don’t you think I will let you insult my father, with all these cries of Levitas, Levitas… Who is this Levitas?”

“Why, your father’s dragon, of course!”

“My father’s dragon is called Caesar, and trust me, he wants for nothing.”

“For goodness’ sake, your father’s other dragon… his first dragon!”

Stuart stared down at him. “There was no other dragon.”

“Of course there was! In his youth, your father was a courier captain, to a Winchester called Levitas. The beast died in the year five, from injuries sustained in action, and a while later, they gave him Caesar…. ’tis no secret.”

“So?” Stuart spat, pitting wrath against the unsettling sense of something coming undone and unraveling before his eyes. “Even if it were true — which it is not — where is the shame in that?”

Captain Laurence looked up at him, indignation slowly yielding to surprise. “You… really do not know?”

“I do not know what?”

“It was long ago,” Horatio Laurence said, looking away. “Perhaps you had better speak to Temeraire, and hear it first-hand.”

“No! Out with it, tell me. What happened to Levitas?”

Captain Laurence hesitated. “You see,” he then began, slowly. “Temeraire says Levitas was as devoted to his captain as a dragon may be, but Captain Rankin was… not. Levitas’ harness was always dirty. He was often left alone, hungry or thirsty, and hardly ever heard a kind word. Everyone knew of it, but nobody stepped in. My father attempted it, being new to our ways, but I think it won him no friends either side. You know what the Corps is like, regarding interference.”

“And then?” Stuart asked, willing himself to stand still even as his legs yearned to pace, to regain mastery over a suddenly swaying ground.

“And then?” Captain Laurence tapped the side of the bottle, absently. “Then he died. Took a French ball to the chest while scouting and bled to death at Dover Covert — alone, or almost so. Temeraire says your father did come in the end, which is… something, I suppose.”

 _No,_ Stuart thought. It couldn’t be, it mustn’t be…

“And you expect me to believe this touching little tale?” he snarled. “A story spread by your treacherous father and his whiggish beast?”

He wanted Captain Laurence to jump up and strike him. Pain, violence, shouting was something he had learned to abide. But the other did not stir.

“Well, Rankin,” he said, sounding tired rather than hostile. “When I was a boy, Temeraire always told us bedtime stories, and I will allow for some measure of exaggeration. But he tried not to tell this one to the end, until I pressed him, again and again, and when he finally yielded, I knew why he hadn’t wanted to tell us, for it made my little brother cry… So I really think it is what happened.” He paused, and shrugged. “Besides, Levitas’ name is on the dragons’ monument in London.”

No doubt paid for by your political father and his beast, Stuart would have liked to rejoin. But Levitas’ name had been in that book in Edinburgh, too, the details matching to the last particular, and how should Admiral Laurence have contrived to tamper with that dusty tome?

He took a deep breath, trying to call up anger and spite and laugh at it all away. But the world tilted unstoppably now, everything sliding into place in this ugliest of plays, and him the greatest fool upon the stage… Captain Lowe’s hesitancy to let him have his post. The whispers aboard ship, the turned backs of the aviators in the mess. Temeraire’s censure. Captain Laurence’s hostility. Captain Gallagher’s discomfiture at the ball. Laetificat’s questioning Veloxia. _Does Rankin treat you well…_ His father’s hatred of Admiral Laurence. His father’s assignment to Australia. His father’s treatment of… _No._ He tried to wrestle them down, but the memories rose unbidden, the ones he’d tried so hard to forget: his mother at the end of the long mirroring table in Sydney, her eyes red from weeping and her voice cracked. _How could you, Jeremy! How could you let the beast endanger your son — your own flesh and blood!_

His father’s face had been utterly unmoved. _I am growing tiring of your hysterics. God knows I’ve treated you better than you deserve. I made you my wife, I acknowledged that whelp of a son of yours when he might be anyone’s bastard, I bought you dresses and diamonds, and this is how you thank me?_

Stuart had been in his nurse’s arms, too small to be listened to, though he had tried to say that he was fine, that he had not been bitten at all… but nobody had paid attention, and then his mother had risen and torn off her glittering necklace, flung it to the floor and stamped on it, and it had shattered into a hundred needle-sharp shards. _There, Jeremy. So much for your diamonds._

 _How dare you,_ his father had hissed, pushing his own chair back, his hand flying up. _You convict slut, you worthless piece of-_

 _No,_ his mother had pleaded. _No, I beg you! Not in front of the boy!_

_Out, all of you!_

Stuart had screamed and squirmed as hard as a four-year-old could, trying to run to his mother who’d cowered with silent tears sliding down her cheeks. But the nurse and footman and parlour-maid had snatched him up and borne him away, and shut that heavy door, the handle too high for his small hands to reach, even on tip-toes…

“Lies!” he gasped, forcing himself back to the present, but his voice came out as a pitiful whimper, and he hated himself for it. He picked up the bottle to hurl onto the fire. The liquor caught, a bright tongue of flame roaring up to the roof. Veloxia shrieked and Captain Laurence jumped up to stamp out the scattered embers, with rather a practised air.

“Rankin,” he said, slow as though talking to a shying animal. “Rankin, look here-“

“What? Why are you still here? Why are you still talking to me? Is that what you thought of me all along — here he goes, the sinner’s son, the villain? Is that what they all think of me?”

“Goodness, no, Rankin. Why should I think such a thing? — Do you believe me in all counts agreed with my father? I have an own head screwed on, and believe so do you. You have as much capacity to do good or bad as any other person, only—“

Stuart did not hear the rest of his words. He turned and fled with both hands pressed to his forehead, out into the pouring rain.

\- -

After the storm, a cool mist clung to the hills and seeped through the ancient walls of Laggan Covert, muffling all sounds. Even the _clink, clink_ from the smithy sounded oddly distant when Horatio picked his way through the busy harness sheds, turning his head about until he saw the bright orange of Procella’s wings. The dragon lay awkwardly crouched to allow her measurements to be taken while the workmen hammered away at the plates for her first fighting-harness. An inquiry of one of her lieutenants pointed him to the shack where leather and tarpaulin were stored in bales. He already had his hand on the latch when he heard head a sob, and Captain Gallagher’s calm voice from within.

“No, no, we don’t need to take you to the surgeons,” Lucy was saying, patiently. “You are not ill. Listen here, the good news is this will only happen once every month, and you must chart it as carefully as a sailor his tides, so that—”

“Once every month?” a tearful young voice exclaimed, and Horatio quickly drew back, resolving to take another turn around the yard until he saw the door open and a delicate girl in a midwingman’s uniform scurry out, her face smudged and her expression one of blank horror. Captain Gallagher stepped out behind her, replacing her hat.

“Heavens, Lucy, what have you done to the poor child?” Horatio asked, walking over.

“Child no more,” she sighed. “Why, she’s one of those poor spares from the great houses… I have no quarrel with your mother’s scheme of accepting gently bred ladies, I only wish they weren’t so… _very_ gently bred. They know nothing, nothing at all!”

“Ah. I expect she does now.”

“Yes,” Lucy said, laconically. “What of you? Had a good time in Edinburgh?”

“Quite, except for that thunderstorm,” Horatio said. “I think Temeraire has pardoned me now, at the cost of two hours’ reading about vegetables in Latin.”

“Hmm. He was fretting himself to pieces when you didn’t return, saying he should never have let you go with Rankin, though we told him you were well capable of looking after yourself.”

“You flatter me, Lucy,” he said. “Speaking of Rankin, I wanted to ask you something.”

“Still trying to get rid of him?” she shrugged and turned to the blacksmith’s assistant who had come hurrying up bearing a harness-part. “That edge looks a trifle sharp to me... Prossy, how did it sit? … Very well, take it back to be padded out then, but file down that corner, thank you.”

“No,” Horatio said. “That is — yes, I would like him to be transferred, but not because I dislike him…. well, I do, naturally, but I now understand why Veloxia has been acting so oddly. It’s not his fault or his captain’s, but because she has a terror of explosions. You should have seen her last night… So that whole scheme of setting her to rockets is pure madness. She’s a fine flyer in many other ways, though, as you saw at the review. Surely you’ll be able to use her?”

Captain Gallagher frowned, putting an unconscious hand on her belly. “I might. But what use is it for her to be training with us? His uncle will hardly allow him to be sent to India.”

“No, but it’ll save a lot of grief and likely a few crewmen’s lives while they’re here. Besides, my father tells me it is unlikely that any navy ship capable of launching rockets will be assigned to Australia at present. Not important enough when there’s trouble brewing at the Cape and in Canada.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Look at you tugging the strings. I thought you despised that sort of thing.”

Horatio smiled, ruefully. “Will you do it? — Portland will listen to you, Lucy. I know your father served with him. He thinks the world of you.”

She shrugged. “Oh, very well, if you will do me a favour in turn. I found an old copy of the Songs of Ossian slipped behind that piano in the mess. They’re a little dusty, but I thought we might give them a try.”

He grinned. “That’s hardly a favour, though you know I can’t read a single note.”

“We’ll puzzle it out well enough, I expect. Tonight, then?”

He nodded and made her an ironic leg. “Your servant, Captain. — Thank you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> May I take a moment to apologize for money inaccuracies in this, previous and succeeding chapters. Victorian coinage is doing my head in and at some point i lost the will to check (though I expect the dragons will be Just Fine)…
> 
> One pound = twenty shillings.  
>  _Ok got that._  
>  Twelve pence to a shilling — 240 pence to a pound.  
>  _Ok… sounds unnecessarily complicated..._  
>  One penny is two half pennies -  
>  _GOT THAT ONE!_  
>  \- or four farthings, making 48 farthings in a shilling and 960 farthings in a pound.  
>  _Right. I’m lost again… Maybe it gets easier as you go up?_  
>  One guinea is 21 shillings.  
>  _Eh? isn’t that kind of the same as a pound?_  
>  No. You’re thinking of a sovereign. A sovereign is the same as a pound.  
>  _(muffled screaming)_  
>  …  
>  _When’s decimal day?_  
>  1971\. Sorry.


	13. The baths

Longwing manoeuvres were altogether different from rocket practice, and Veloxia seemed born for them.   
  
Stuart did not understand how the change-over had come about, but one of Captain Gallagher’s midwingmen had delivered the Admiral’s note ordering their transfer shortly after lunch, just as he was trying to muster sufficient courage to leave the deserted mess and join Temeraire’s formation for another predictably humiliating turn, snapping orders at his crew and facing Captain Laurence without letting his face betray the shattering of his pride.   
  
“Veloxia begs me tell you she regrets your absence in her clearing,” the girl had declared with perfect enunciation, and Stuart had blinked at her confused until she’d bobbed a flawless curtsy and cast her eyes down. “She misses you, sir.”   
  
“What is your name?”  
  
“Midwingman Cavendish, sir, of Procella’s, if you please.”  
  
“Cavendish?” he’d muttered. “Cavendish, like the Duke of-“  
  
“Yes, sir. But we are not to use titles, since we are soldiers in Her Majesty’s service,” she had gasped, blushing, to add, somewhat mulishly: “But I’ve written to my sisters to tell Lady Rankin how well you did at the review, when next they take tea together!”

This had been a blow. Stuart would rather not have called fresh attention to his whereabouts, but her impeccable manners and doe-eye gaze had left him no escape — impossible to tell her to get herself gone as he would have done with Gordon or Farlane. So not twenty minutes later, Veloxia had been rigged and manned, and beating out to join the drill. 

Procella’s formation had the run of a desolate valley, surrounded by ragged peaks so no civilian risked wandering into her range: hampered by a new armour, the young Longwing yet struggled to control her spray, missing her targets as often as she hit them. Stuart could not help swallowing when he first saw one of the straw puppets blacken and shrivel under her attack, drops of acid sizzling on a nearby rock, eating away deep into the granite.   
  
But the devastation occurred in near silence, with only a faint crackling and hissing sound, and Veloxia was undaunted. Indeed the precision flying required to keep up with Procella and shield her vulnerable wings while avoiding the deadly spray seemed to put her in her element, and Captain Gallagher’s praise, shouted through a speaking trumpet, did the rest: her turns were crisp, her wingsbeats attuned, her runs straight and her attention to signals faultless. To see her perform so well with barely a hand on her harness was hardly a surprise after he’d seen her hold her own against the ferals, Stuart told himself, yet it hurt in a more personal manner now, insult heaped upon injury. He gave only the bare minimum of orders, and the crew moved hushed and uneasy at first, but they gradually unbent, and by the end of the day ignored him as roundly as they had done aboard ship. Stuart observed in silence, taking stock of his place in this new, jarring reality — worse than unwanted, but a disturbance, a liability, just as his father must have been.   
  
The impression deepened still further when he returned to the mess in the evening, to find something of a concert in progress. Captain Gallagher and Captain Laurence had just finished a lively song and sat down together to general applause. Midwingman Cavendish picked her way over to the piano, bowed and began a sonata, note following note with graceful precision, a showpiece Stuart had often heard Louisa reel off in London. Cavendish played without any of the pretentiousness he’d seen in his cousin, but he still stood in the door frozen and dismayed, quite unable to step in.  
  
“Come and sit down, Rankin!” Captain Laurence hissed into the sensitive pause after a pearling run of semiquavers. “Don’t stand there miserable as sin!”   
  
Nobody reproached him for disturbing the fermata, no: all heads turned to stare at Stuart instead, sniggers and giggles rising unchecked, and even Cavendish glanced at him alarmed before quickly playing on. Stuart retreated into the corridor as the cords surged back, struggling for composure, but he had not a single shred of indignation left, only shame and despair. Society did not want him, his stay in London had clarified as much — but in the Corps, too, he was damned to live as an outcast, and not through the others’ disrespect and jealousy as he had always assumed, but for being a sinner and the son of a sinner.   
  
He turned and walked outside, to the lake. 

The Highland summer made for an incomplete night at best, a mere darkening of the twilight, the loch an endless mirror under a faint half-moon with feather-like clouds drifting above. Stuart picked over the sandy shore and filled his coat’s pockets with as many stones as they would hold.   
  
The water licked at his boots as he waded in, tipping in ice-cold to soak his stockings. A strangled breath escaped him, almost a sob. He stopped, silver ripples spreading all around. _Pitiful_ , he told himself. _Weak_. And his father’s voice answered in his head, with reliable scorn: _No self-control. How will you ever control a dragon?_  
  
He grit his teeth and walked on. The weight of the laden coat on his shoulders seemed to urge him onward now, the water rising steadily, cool and soothing like the rain on his skin under the sodden rhododendrons where he’d cowered last night, ignoring Captain Laurence and Veloxia calling out in the darkness. Floating plants snagged and tangled his boots, so he abandoned them, pebbles and sand soft under his feet. A cold current whispered up from the depths, beckoning. Still every step felt harder now, each a small battle between longing for and bracing against the inevitable dropping of the ground: the loch was a steep drowned valley, many fathoms deep, and he’d seen heavyweights like Temeraire paddle around close to the shore without beaching. _Man up… No place for softness or false gallantry in those destined to captain a dragon, or else methinks I ought to address my letter to Admiral Laurence instead…_  
  
Running footsteps on the shore far behind him, overloud in the still air, and a voice bellowing: “Rankin! This is no time to go swimming! Come back!… You — you _cannot_ swim!”   
  
Cursing and splashing. He ignored it. _But my ill fate pushed me on now with an obstinacy that nothing could resist…_ Another step, another, and here it was, the drop — falling, sinking, as through a gallows’ trap door, only slower and silent, into a perfect cold darkness.   
  
A perfect cold darkness abruptly broken by splashing and snorting, an arm thrown around his chest and another tugging on the scruff of his neck, beating up furiously, near strangling him. Stuart fought back and broke the surface gasping.   
  
“Stop!” he heard. “ _Stop!_ For heaven’s sake stop thrashing about so, or you’ll have both of us sunk! Let go of that coat! I’ve got you, just… _easy!_ Yes, good!”   
  
The coat slipped off his shoulders. Stuart let himself go limp to assess the position of his assailant, who now held him pinned to the surface with an iron grip while pulling back to the shore with slow, laborious one-armed strokes. Then he reared up again, twisting, and aimed an elbow blow at his opponent’s ribs. An angry scream, and a fist-stroke hit him clean, smacking his head back underwater.   
  
A general numbness gave way to sharp pain when he was dragged over the sand and pebbles of the shore, and finally dropped. He rolled over coughing, caking himself with sand, and strained to look up.

Captain Laurence stood over him, dripping wet and livid. “What were you doing?” he shouted. “Walking into the water like goddamned Ophelia, or whatever her name was? Are you out of your mind?”   
  
“Leave me alone,” Stuart coughed, pushing himself to his knees. “This is my business.”   
  
“Is it now?” Captain Laurence snarled, dropping down opposite him to stare him straight into the face. “Is it really, to go walking into a lake with pockets full of stones? … I’ve seen it, Rankin. One of our riflemen did it, in Quebec — got himself tangled in debt, went to the forest and put a bullet in his head. No big deal, you might say, less blood than a regular action. But it was. Even Iskierka was affected. As for the ensign who found him…” He stopped himself, sharply, and shook his head. “I’ve killed many a man and I’m sure so have you, and not lost sleep about it, but this was different, entirely different! The whispers going around, the dampening of spirits… _your business_ , indeed… Do you think it would have been a pleasure to find you washed up, bloated and fish-eaten? No! You may settle your damned scores whichever way you like, but stop dragging others in. No people, no dragons. Understood?”   
  
“It would have been a most transient pain to be sure,” Stuart hissed, gathering his clammy clothes around himself, “if felt at all, and even then, more than recompensed by the relief of being shot of me.”  
  
Captain Laurence snorted. “Ah! Is that so? What about Veloxia, eh? You’re happy to deal her spirits that sort of parting blow? And Lucy? Such shame to be serving under a woman that you had to drown yourself the very same day? Goodness, even that little midwingman of hers — she’s perked up so much after seeing one who speaks like her in command of the formation’s fastest dragon! I do not expect _my_ feelings to enter your calculation, but you might have—”  
  
Stuart stared at him, incredulous that the other dared make such a scene. “Your feelings, sir, amount to nothing but the liveliest disgust.”  
  
Captain Laurence glared back. “Perhaps,” he hissed. “But there is honesty in that, is there not? I value honesty a great deal, when most anyone I’ve come across has been a spineless creature bent on deriving advantage. A brother in the service — could not Her Grace put in a word for his promotion? An uncle struggling for his seat — would not Admiral Laurence speak in his favour?… Lickspittles, all of them, or even deceitful.” He shook his head, grasping angry fistfuls of wet sand. “Take Ingram. You think I’ve wronged him, and perhaps I have. But he wronged me first. Shortly after I was made post, shortly after arriving here, I went to Temeraire’s clearing unannounced, only to find my own lieutenant there, talking about this very great interest in political philosophy of his, begging to recommend himself to so distinguished a dragon, and telling Temeraire that if he ever felt dissatisfied with his new situation, he should not hesitate to confide in him… the impudence of it! But the worst thing was to hear Temeraire answer. He spoke all duty and dignity: _not a trifle unhappy… would settle in very well to be sure… so very glad of his new crew…_ Oh, Iskierka would have burnt Ingram up to a crisp! I stole away in silence or else I should have called him out, career be damned…. But when I took him up the next day and asked whether he had cause for dissatisfaction, he was meek as milk. Said he hoped to distinguish himself, would never dream of interfering, had the utmost respect for my record and valour, all the usual idle flattery, after bad-mouthing me in front of my dragon! I wanted nothing so much as be rid of him, but I needed some pretext, something less humiliating than the truth — but alas, he is a good officer… So perhaps you will pardon me for taking an interest in his files.” 

Stuart knelt silent and confused, torn between bewilderment at this confession and a sudden, fierce anger with Lieutenant Ingram. But Captain Laurence did not look up, determinedly drawing circles in the sand.

“You see, Rankin,” he went on, “I never gave these things much thought. I still don’t like to, because it… hurts. But I did last night, wondering why I regretted your absence after you stormed out on us, and the best I’ve been able to come up with is that… well, strange as it sounds, that I’ve come to cherish that dark and adverse face of yours. It says, _here I am, and I haven’t a single favour to ask_ … Oh, to think of the time you used that despicable ruse, or when you felt the need to burn that book, just to show me how little you cared for my good opinion! You are my enemy, but you make no bones of it, and I… I like that.”   
  
Stuart frowned, wondering whether Captain Laurence had noticed his error — _because of how little I cared, sir, not to show you how little I cared_. But the other looked so wretched, he could not bring himself to say it. And even so, had it truly been a mistake? Did he care for the other’s opinion, in some small way? His mind balked to even consider it, and he was grateful when Captain Laurence rose and shrugged, beating sand off his wet trousers, and replaced the coat and boots he had evidently thrown aside before plunging into the water.   
  
“Enough, you will want none of this rot. Is your head alright? I’m sorry I had to knock you out, but you would not stop squirming. — Let us go.”   
  
Stuart struggled to his feet and followed him without protest. It was scarcely past ten, the covert‘s corridors and courtyards still bustling, and the sentry at the gate stared at the sight of them, damp and, in Stuart's case, bootless. Captain Laurence turned into a corridor Stuart had never walked before. “Come this way,” he said, waving Stuart down a flight of stairs suddenly shut off by a metal door. He pulled it open without ado, letting out a gush of steam.  
  
“Where are we going?” Stuart asked, and stopped.  
  
Captain Laurence had already stepped through. “Why, to the baths, of course. There’s fresh linen there for the taking. Better than making a perfect spectacle of ourselves. — Pray shut that door behind you.”   
  
The stairs wound down further still and finally opened into a large, domed changing room. One set of rock-cut shelves was strewn with clothing and shoes, and another held heaps of folded towels. Captain Laurence rummaged around the pile. “Ha! We’re in luck.” He held up two crumpled dressing gowns, shrugging at the embroidered initials. “They were moved out long ago. — Take it, and put your wet things in the basket over there. The servants collect it every day and take it to the laundresses.”   
  
Stuart accepted it reluctantly. But two other men stepped in behind them, nodding civilly at Captain Laurence, so he had no choice but to do as everyone else did, and strip down. He felt his cheeks heating as he did so — he had never undressed in front of anyone he knew, save perhaps his nurse — and strove to keep his face to the wall. However, turning to throw his clothes into the basket, he caught sight of Captain Laurence and froze, appalled. The other had his coat and shirt off, hopping to pull down a wet stocking. All across his back was a blue pattern of slender chevrons like dripping strings, with another smudged ink-blot on his ankle. _An admiral’s son,_ Stuart thought, _marked like a common sailor._  
  
Captain Laurence glanced over a shoulder, and shrugged at Stuart’s expression. “Oh, that old sin… The Mohawks and Iroquois put them on their faces, though fortunately I wasn’t drunk enough for that… Still ’tis hardly accurate. A fur trapper offered to do it in return for my ration of rum, when I was an impressionable mid, and I could not ask him to stop or look a right coward… God, how Granby upbraided me. It would have earned me my first flogging, had I not already been unable to lie on my back for a few days after.” He smirked at the memory, and then pointed at Stuart’s leg. “How did that happen?”  
  
Stuart startled, having, in his bafflement, paid no attention to how he exposed himself. The bunyip-claw gash had healed up ugly, red glossy skin bulging on his thigh where the wound had gaped too far to be sewn, before petering out to a thinner line along his calf. He quickly threw the dressing gown over it and wrapped it tight, shaking his head.   
  
“Right,” Captain Laurence said, without pressing him further. “I must go now, I promised Lucy. I trust you’ll find your way out? — Though perhaps you’d better stay and warm yourself up. The baths form a circle, you cannot get lost… But don’t you even think of making yourself the idiot who drowned in five feet of lukewarm water.”   
  
Stuart nodded, swallowing down his fresh shock at the notion of him seeking out Captain Gallagher in a mere dressing gown. Another man’s honour was none of his concern, and in any case, she seemed well capable of defending herself, if even she wanted to. Captain Laurence nodded back at him and departed, boots in hand.   
  
Stuart had meant to give him a sufficient headstart to avoid crossing paths again and then take his leave. But standing in the humid heat with the trickle of water from the next room, he only needed to close his eyes and imagine the screeching of the parakeets to believe himself home again, in the Blue Mountains during the rainy season, exploring his father’s estates after outrunning the current looby to slip down mud slopes and build rafts from scribbly-gum bark, gleeful and dirty as a savage. The happy memories were brief and frayed, but enough to make him open the door, gingerly, and step through into the next room.  
  
It was filled with solid steam, any fleck of exposed skin immediately covered with a thin film of water and his hair once again dripping wet and uncurling. Brushing it from his eyes, he could make out a few figures lying about on benches, low muttered conversation, and the clacking of dice from a corner. He quickly walked on before anyone could recognize him.  
  
The following room was deserted and held a long, shallow pool glittering by the light of torches set into the walls — Captain Laurence’s five feet of water, he thought, dipping in a cautious toe to find it tepid warm, and smelling repulsive. Still the room was a splendid sight, and not on account of the pool or the faded, somewhat indecent painting on the ceiling. A series of deep-cut niches had been set into the walls, shut off with solid iron fencing, and each held carefully swaddled dragon eggs, crammed almost and glistening: green or grey or speckled, pointed or oblong, some little larger than an ostrich’s get, others so big he could never have lifted them. Most were leathery and translucent enough to show delicate veins marbling the inside, but a few were almost hardened, and these had been set to the very front.  
  
Stuart stepped closer and grasped the wrought-iron grille with both hands, overcome with a strange sense of awe. Here was glory and hope and chance of promotion, a glimpse of the Corps’ future at large and the many smaller fates bound up with it. Each smooth shell spoke of that one chance every aviator aspired to, even the roughshod types sent to Australia with their hoods and chains — that moment a soft tooth or claw broke through, and wonderful triumph or utter shame hinged on the choice of one famished newborn creature, a moment as magical as it was terrifying. A moment that for him, Stuart reminded himself, would never come. His destiny was Caesar. 

Yet he could not stop looking at them, even the small moorhen-speckled Winchester egg nearest him. How could his father have done it, he thought — to harden his heart against a creature who had accepted him and placed utter trusting love in him, and called it strength? Captain Rankin had been handed that rare chance twice over, due to family influence rather than personal merit, and, Stuart suddenly felt stonily certain, he had wasted it twice.   
  
He let go of the bars. The scorn of the others made ever more appalling sense, enough to send despair surging back — the loch, or even his pistols… But then he had to think of Captain Laurence again, by the shore. _I regretted your absence._ Well, here was one thing he would freely admit they shared in common. Horatio Laurence would also never stand next to a rocking egg nervously clutching a miniature harness, his duty as fixed as Stuart’s own. Did he ever regret it? Stuart did not know, would never know; the very question was absurd. Like it or not, Captain Laurence performed his duty — and he must perform it, too.  
  
The warmth and stench of the room suddenly seemed unbearable. Stuart hurried on, through another steam room, and finally to another with fresh air and a cool breeze from above. The single plunge-pool here was chipped and empty, but a few buckets of clear water were lined up along the walls. He undid the borrowed gown with flying fingers, tossed it aside and picked up one of the buckets to tip over his head, sputtering and gasping as the cold water washed away sand and silt and put an end to his useless ruminations.

  
\- -

  
  
“Good, good!” Portland called out the next afternoon. Temeraire’s formation had completed the pass to the fire of real rockets, not a wing out of line, and Horatio and the other captains had gathered around the admiral while Laetificat addressed the dragons. “I believe you are ready not to embarrass us now… which is just as well, because I have been informed Deptford yard has finally found whatever the problem was with those scuttles, and the ships now fire without complaining, so the squadron has been given orders for Ballantrae under a Captain Hearne.” He drew out a crumpled letter, frowning at it. “ _With all due dispatch,_ this says, though I am under no illusion they will beat up as slowly as they may, just to show who’s master. So you may leave tomorrow, and still reach in good time… Unfortunately there isn’t a covert anywhere near those parts. I am sorry for our colleagues’ lack of courtesy, but I had no say in it.” He sighed. “You may take lodging with the fishermen, of course, and as for the beasts… well, again, I had no say.”

Horatio held himself still, but looking at his colleagues’ stiff and formal faces, the shared indignation was plain. Damn their Lordships at the admiralty, he thought, who put the sailors’ convenience and good anchorage before the comfort of the dragons. When would they finally understand that a boat had no feelings the way a dragon had? The whole business was water on Temeraire’s mills, of course, and he would be in for another lecture on the brilliantly provisioned legions of China, with the usual remarks on his regrettable inability to read the corresponding tracts in Mandarin, hurting all the more for the perfect lack of malevolence with which they were delivered.

“Now, Captain Laurence,” Portland went on, producing a packet, “here are the formation’s orders. No orders as such, save to listen to Captain Hearne without fuss, fly whatever patterns they ask of you, and show them what our dragons can do — no beast of the Corps to be cowed or outdone by their newfangled weapons, and no more damnable cuts to our spending.” 

Horatio bowed, accepting it with barely repressed irritation — he had dreaded as much, but hearing it spelled out so clearly was quite another thing: subordinate to Navy men who knew nothing of flying. He broke the seal to glance over the neatly written sheet, and paused over the list of dragons: _Temeraire, Orion, Felicitas, Albus, Veloxia._

“Sir, why is Veloxia listed here?” he asked, looking up. “I thought she transferred to Procella’s.”  
  
“And never did we miss her, silly capering creature,” Captain Galbraith of Orion chuckled, until Horatio’s glare at once silenced him and changed his good-humoured expression to one of deep confusion.  
  
“Oh?” Portland asked. “Let me see — indeed. Well, I had it written out in advance… and Veloxia's orders were for rockets, most emphatically so. But I cannot fail to notice the improvement now that she has left. I think it is best if we leave things as they are. – Perhaps I ought to write to Captain Rankin at once, and pronounce her unsuitable for the task… I imagine he will prefer to recall her and send another, for all the many months it will take.”

“Sir, I believe you had better not,” Horatio said, the words escaping him before he could think.

Admiral Portland raised an eyebrow. “You presume to tell me my tasks?”  
  
“No — no, sir, far from it. But it will reflect poorly on the beast when they have not been here long, and we have already seen some improvement – or so Captain Gallagher tells me,” he added, hastily, feeling the stares of the others. “She was very impressed with them yesterday. Perhaps my initial judgement was unduly harsh… too swayed by prejudice.”  
  
Admiral Portland’s expression softened a little. “Well, I am glad to see some sober reflection at last, Captain Laurence,” he grumbled. “Perhaps you do have the makings of a commander after all. – Right, back to your tasks! You may see to your packing now.”

  
\- -  


  
“It’s a mere fishing village, Temeraire,” Horatio said, in increasing exasperation. “No covert. Certainly no pavilions. There is no point rushing there. You will be sitting around in the dirt waiting for the ships to heave up — will do so even tomorrow and the day after, most like.”

“We could still try to make things nice for our friends!” Temeraire said, belligerently. “I am sure something could be contrived, if only people put themselves to it. I could pay some workmen to put up a shelter, and-“

“It really is not worth the expense and effort, for a mere temporary training ground. The Navy fellows are sure to call things off once the weather becomes too rough.”

“I am not concerned for _my_ comfort,” Temeraire said, ruff unfurling, “but it really is very shabby to make us lie in the fields like beasts of burden.”

“And I don’t argue with that. But Temeraire, we cannot give ourselves the name of complainers.”

“Laurence did-“

“I know!” Horatio exclaimed, his patience snapping. “But he was Wing Admiral of the Eastern front, during a crucial war, whereas I am newly made and dispensable! I realize it is a terrible setback, but will you, for once, consider _my_ countenance and prospects, before your damnable politics?”  
  
Temeraire stared at him, ruff dropping, and Horatio instantly felt ashamed of himself.

“I am sorry, Temeraire,” he stammered. “I am sorry. Please don’t take it so. I am being unjust. I find myself overset so easily, of late… pray do not let it concern you.”   
  
Temeraire looked at him, huge gleaming eyes, full of concern. “You are not a setback, Horatio. I would never make you do anything you do not like.”  
  
“I know,” Horatio said, and would almost have added, _my dear,_ but that felt wrong, his father’s privilege. _Oh, I wish I could love you as you deserve,_ he thought. _I cannot seem to love anyone, these days — it is a skill I have quite lost._ He turned away, running a hand over his forehead.  
  
“Are you unhappy?” Temeraire said and nudged him with his blunt nose, a gentle gust of warm breath over his shoulder. “Pray tell me. — Veloxia said they offered her lieutenant five thousand pounds to be married. Should you like to have five thousand pounds, Horatio? It could be done in a trice. Or perhaps you should like to be married? You go to the village so often, and besides,” the dragon's head came up sharply, “Veloxia’s lieutenant is only _Rankin_ — so I am sure they would offer _you_ a lot more than five thousand pounds to do it, and,” he swallowed, “if it made you happy, I should be quite agreed.”

Horatio let his hand drop, with a snort of laughter. “Heavens, you dragons are the worst gossips under the sun. Have you put a price on each of our heads?” Temeraire looked at him confused and injured, and he shook his head. “No. I should not like five thousand pounds, nor to be married, and neither of these things would make my happiness. – Come now, do you want to read one of your books?”  
  
“No,” Temeraire said and curled himself up, brooding.  
  
“Fine. Good night, then,” Horatio said, and waited awhile. But Temeraire did not stir again, so he climbed down from the granite platform.

He had already instructed the crew to prepare for departure, and the harnessmen had brought out the carrying rig to be oiled and polished and then folded up again, ready to be strapped on. Their boxes and bundles were stacked at the side of the clearing, and nothing remained to be done, so he went back to his silent room to attempt his own packing, throwing clothing and belongings from the wardrobe onto the bed, carelessly. He gave it up and tried working over the maps instead, drawing in the routes the ships might take in the Firth of Clyde, and the flight-room they’d have between the shore and the island of Ailsa Craig. It looked a right forbidding rock, but if the villagers gave them trouble about the dragons, they could set up camp there. It would be good to be in the field again. He was not sorry to leave the comforts of the castle behind, and perhaps he and Temeraire would grow in mutual respect, as often happened on campaigns. 

He ought to send word to Molly, he thought, but a glance at the clock showed dinner-hour almost past — she’d soon be busy enough. He would go to Kinloch Laggan the next morning, he decided, when he was sure not to intrude, and would still be able to give her daughters the little plywood dragon for a parting-gift.

The only thing he would miss for sure was the baths: surrounded by hot steam, he could imagine himself back at Iskierka’s side, in more carefree days. Iskierka would never have bickered about orders or suggested they petition the admiralty, or build pavilions in the middle of nowhere. She would have jetted steam and threatened to roast their Lordships for their insolence, and he would have joined in the tirade, heartily, before deciding it was not worth their shared bother, and they ought to go and hunt for dinner instead, or practise swooping dives. Once encamped, Iskierka would have made herself a nest of glowing embers to sleep on, the other dragons huddling close, but not so close as to risk being burnt or jabbed by her spikes.

Well, an evening remained to make use of the steam room, Horatio thought, unearthing the dressing gown from the jumble on the bed, and slamming the door shut as he went.  
  
On account of dinner-hour, the baths lay almost deserted, and nobody coughed or pointedly spread their own towel when he stretched out on one of the stone benches. But not even the luxurious steam and the warm stone in his back could drive the dark thoughts from his head today, and of all the things he should be concerning himself with, they stubbornly returned to Lieutenant Rankin. What a strange picture he had made next door, with that painful contrast between the tanned skin of his face and hands and the absolute pallor of the rest of his body. Did he never loosen that neckcloth of his, bask on a hillside, or cool his feet in a stream? And that wicked scar on his leg, not so very old — no sword or pistol could have made such a wound. Yet he had refused to speak about it, where most anyone would have leapt at the chance to tell a tale. It had touched him, somehow, or why else did he remember it so vividly? Had he simply been happy to gaze at a handsome subordinate in the nude?

It was not like he hadn't, at other times, though he had learned to wrench his thoughts into more appropriate channels with the aid of a pinch or slap or even burn if need be. But no bathing fellow officer or golden-haired midwingman had ever lingered on his mind as stubbornly as that blighted wretch Rankin, with those scornful turquoise eyes of his, looking around his wrecked room after the dance. Horatio had never felt so exposed, flayed, laid open, and in a burning rage for it — without Molly’s intercession, there surely would have been more blood. And yet Rankin had not reported him, had even told on Ingram, whom Horatio had supposed his ally. Horatio had kept the resulting truce, but he could still hardly account for his own behavior at the shore. _I’ve come to cherish that dark and adverse face of yours._ Honesty had put the words into his mouth, a strange sense of connection had made him utter them, but having said them out aloud, he felt like he had flung open the box of Pandora inside his head. How else could he have forgotten himself so, with Temeraire? 

He rolled over and put his head into his palms. Damn it, he was no sodomite, he must not be. He was a captain now, not one lieutenant in three whose dalliances could be shrugged off as youthful banter, and who could distract himself with his sword-work or take Iskierka to set something on fire if strange urges took him. He must be an authority figure now, possess dignity and gravitas, supervise the juniors’ lessons, and above all not damage Admiral Laurence's standing in parliament, when so much about the good of dragons in England depended upon it. The Corps was liberal enough, so long as one was discreet — he himself had served under Admiral Granby all his life, and never though less of him for the generally acknowledged fact of his being an invert — but society, at large, was not.

Horatio remembered the time he had first learned the lesson, sneaking through their encampment in Nova Scotia in the first violent throes of a boyhood fascination with everything Mohawk, trying to move as silently as those noble warriors with their small feather-crested dragons. He’d become tolerably good at it by then, and absorbed in his secret war-trail, had not paid any mind to where it led him: the clearing occupied by Immortalis, the Yellow Reaper who’d travelled up from New York where he’d been escorting a diplomatic mission. The older boys had told Horatio that his Captain, Little, was Admiral Granby’s _particular friend_ , with enough coughing and rolling of eyes to make Horatio swallow his question why the dragon had flown so very far out of his way, and feign understanding. And indeed he’d seen them standing together next to the drowsing dragon like very good friends. Admiral Granby had even put an arm round Captain Little’s waist. 

“It is a hard service,” he’d heard Granby say. “But I promise you, once I retire, my every waking hour shall be yours and yours alone.”

Captain Little had looked at him sideways. “And what about that fiery girl of yours? She’ll not lie meekly on our oven-rug, and neither will Immortalis… But my nephew Ben’s a promising boy. Chenery took him under his wing, and I let Mort see him as often as I may. — Have not you made some provision by now? I did not notice any young man by the name of Granby when you introduced your officers. Didn’t you say you had nephews enough?”

“I do,” Granby had said, face darkening. “But one’s dead of smallpox, and the others have the most dastardly prayer-book of a mother, who keeps my brother under her heel. Bob had half-agreed to my proposal, but then his wife threw a tantrum, screeching no child of hers was to be thrown to a dragon, and certainly not to… let me think, _that pederast brother of yours_ , I believe was the term she employed, loud enough for all the house to hear -”

“John -“

“- and in any case, her precious sons were hiding under beds and curtains as soon as I brought Iskierka to land. No, Augustine. If you call begging and cowering making provisions, no, I have not.”

“John, please…“

“I had high hopes Ensign Laurence, you know. You saw him today — don’t let the dirty cheeks fool you. Most promising cadet that ever I had, but what’s more, Iskierka thinks the world of him. If only Will could be brought to-” 

“John! Listen!” Captain Little had said, very vehemently for so soft-spoken a man, and grasped the Admiral by both shoulders. “I love you for your idealism, but you must not indulge such fancies. You know the saying — one cannot go egg-stealing! And who knows? Iskierka may only listen to Laurence’s boy because Temeraire made her promise as much. You know what the beasts are like when it comes to their vows, especially where younglings are concerned.”

“I know my dragon, thank you very much,” Granby had growled, freeing himself, and Little had looked at him worried. 

“Forgive me.... dear one, you know I would never presume to-“

“I know, I know…” the Admiral had said, reaching out to draw him close again. “And yet, sometimes I feel like this is all tomfoolery… that in the service, we’re not made for love, and whichever way we try, all we cause is hurt. — Would you do it again, Augustine? Would you let me woo you again? Oh, the brazenness of youth… I could not credit my own luck, never thought I did deserve you, clumsy as I was. Kept thinking you’d leave me as soon as your dragon recovered. But you never did…“ 

Captain Little chuckled. “Woo me? You mean harnessing a Kazilik, just because I told you I could not in all conscience involve myself with a junior officer? — Come now, John. You know this was never you against the dragon. True devotion does not compare. True devotion accepts, and overcomes.”

“Oh, not me against the dragon? You just told me to—“

“No… What I am saying is, now it is us against time. — Oh, Admiral, don’t look so glum. We’ve one night and a day together before I must depart for the transport, and you want to spend it miserable?”

“Don’t call me Admiral, or I shall have to silence you,” Granby had said, and kissed him on the mouth, and Horatio in the bushes had quickly covered his eyes. Grown-ups were so gross — why did they always have to do this? His parents had been just as bad, when his mother had come to visit and his father insisted they all take a walk together like a proper family instead of a horde of feral dragons, ordering Horatio and his brother to be scrubbed and dressed in what Mr Tharkay, with a raised eyebrow, called their number one rig. If all they wanted to do was stick their tongues in each others' necks, they might have left him at his sand-castles.

He had fled back to Iskierka’s clearing, to huddle against the sleeping dragon’s side and consider what he’d heard. He did not know _p_ _ederast_ , so he did not understand why it had upset Granby, but it sounded like a rude word, which meant he could not ask the other boys who would laugh at him for not knowing. He could not speak to Granby either, so eventually, he’d asked the parson who was taking their lessons at the time. The holy man had looked at Horatio with benign understanding, and told him a pederast was a degraded creature, a man committing carnal acts with another, violating the laws of the Lord; that such behaviour produced cowardice, deceit and effeminacy, was a corrupting influence upon society, and constituted grounds for an instant hanging. The whole tirade had left Horatio none the wiser — Admiral Granby was not corrupted, deceitful, and certainly not cowardly.

His understanding had grown since, however. Even his fellow-officers were generous with slurs against boys believed to be lacking in courage, when the Admiral was out of earshot — _clap onto that rope and tug, come now, what are you, a bugger, a coward, a pansy?_ — and the news of the last execution on charge of sodomy had graced the papers only last year. His father had made a speech against it, pointing out the ludicrousness of committing two men to death for a crime that had harmed nobody, on slim evidence, and merely because the accused had been too poor to pay for privacy or bribe the witnesses, as was their richer fellows’ privilege. The retorts by his enemies, the likes of Kensington, had been prompt: what did he, a former sailor and aviator, have to say on the morals of good Christian society?

Horatio pushed himself up and wrapped the dressing gown tight. These thoughts led nowhere. Had he not always managed with girls, one way or another, before this present, embarrassing deadening of even the basest instincts? He would simply keep a grip on himself until it passed, and all would be well. 

He ought to swim a few laps in the basin next room, he decided, to aid a proper night’s sleep. It was usually deserted, but stepping in, he was dismayed to find someone sitting next to the egg niches, reading, and his heart sunk. 

“Rankin! You in the baths, again?” he said.

The lieutenant glanced up. “I apologize, sir," he said, curtly. "I did not realize attendance was a restricted privilege."

“Oh, by no means, save on Sundays, the ladies have it then. … Is that book any good, to drag it all the way down here? Temeraire keeps telling me to read, broaden my mind and such like, but he only ever offers the driest treatises, or in languages I don’t understand… Are you not worried you’ll get water onto it?”

“I am not in the water, sir,” Rankin said.

“No, of course not, you can’t swim. — Would you like to learn it? I can’t forever be pulling you out. We’re being moved tomorrow,” Horatio shrugged, stepping into the water.

Rankin narrowed his eyes. “Where to?”

“Ballantrae, Ayrshire — Admiralty’s orders. Come, Rankin, the more I think about it, the more I think I must show you. The water’s perfectly pleasant, and look, it barely reaches your shoulders. Nothing can happen.”

“No, thank you,” Rankin said, rising. “I have other things to attend to, and in any case, it smells like a cess-pit. It cannot be healthy.”

Horatio stared at him, and then laughed. “The water? Rankin, for heavens’ sake, the water is perfectly fine. It’s the room that stinks — it used to be elbows deep in dragon-muck, you know, when they grew the mushrooms to cure the plague, and those didn’t smell like roses either. It’s been scrubbed no end since, but the smell’s lingered. You could probably smoke it out, but then nobody much wants to blacken these beauties.” He nodded at the frolicking nymphs and fauns on the ceiling. “And the eggs don’t mind. — Here, see, it’s perfectly fine!” He splashed some water in Rankin’s direction, who turned away, shielding his book.

“No. Good evening, sir,” he said.

Horatio shrugged, swam two strokes, and then held his breath and dived, hooking his fingers into a nook at the bottom of the pool to stay there, head down, counting. At fifteen, he heard Rankin’s voice, muffled: “Captain! Sir! Come up!”, and he held on tighter, until at thirty-eight, Rankin finally put a foot into the water and let himself over the side to move towards him, clumsily. Horatio slipped back to the surface, laughing as he wiped water from his eyes.

“Rankin, you’re a tough nut to crack! Just when I thought I could not possibly hold my breath any longer.” 

“You’re toying with me,” Rankin bit out, and tried to scramble back to the edge of the pool. But he was too hasty, making waves that splashed into his face and sent him into even more of a frenzy, rather comical to watch, had Horatio not witnessed him taking every rational step to drown himself — a man could be pardoned a terror of water, in those circumstances. He quickly beat up to grasp Rankin's hand and place it on the side, and the lieutenant at once hauled himself out, streaming. “Don’t touch me,” he snarled.

“Sorry,” Horatio said, looking away. “That was unfair. — Yes, good night, and good-bye. Don't do anything stupid, please.”

Rankin hesitated, dripping. “Is it difficult?” he asked, after a moment.

“What? Swimming? No, it only takes practice, like most things. A breast-stroke’s the easiest, and you can keep your head out of the water. Look, if you move your arms and legs like so…” He swam the short lap to the other end of the pool and turned. Rankin was eyeing him dubiously, as if suspecting a trap. “I'm serious," Horatio said. "I'm happy to show you, and I will promise not to touch you, though in that case, you’d better stick to the side of the pool. — It's better not to hold on or touch your feet to the bottom, though, if you can help it. You’ll learn quicker that way.”

Rankin hesitated. Horatio swam another turn, head held high and with a conscious effort to disrupt the water as little as possible, exaggerating the motions. He was sure to look a right ridiculous dog, but it seemed to reassure Rankin somewhat, for after a moment, the lieutenant lay down flat on his belly and put his arms into the water, mimicking the stroke.

"Is this correct?"

“Yes, good,” Horatio said. “But keep your fingers together and cup your hands, like so.” He grinned when Rankin did, and, surprised by the greater efficiency, splashed a great stroke of water behind himself, some of the eggs left dripping. “Very good! By Christmas, we’ll have you crawling like the Saulteaux of the Great Lakes do. — No, don’t look so offended, Rankin, that's just another type of stroke.”

\- -  


  
Horatio hummed to himself, stuffing his clothes into a canvas bag without care for the creases. It was nearly midnight, and he needed to hurry, but his spirits were greatly improved.

Rankin had tried as hard as he could, within the bounds of reserved dignity, and by the time a few others had walked in to curtail the lesson, he had achieved a whole lane of what could, in all countenance, be described as swimming. He’d finally climbed out of the warm water all by himself, almost smiling, a vast improvement over the dripping piece of misery he’d hauled from the lake the previous day. Horatio himself had done many more laps, demonstrating and appraising, and whether on account of the exertion, or his skipped dinner, he felt voraciously hungry for the first time in weeks. The fire had collapsed into cinders, the cool night air creeping in through the ancient walls. He pulled the string to summon Simpkins, and a bare five minutes later, there was a knock on the door. Horatio shook his head in disbelief. So this was how smoothly things could work, just as one made ready to leave. He dropped the shirt he was holding and went to the door, to open it wide.

“Simpkins, I believe this is the quickest I’ve ever—“ and stopped, and stared. It was not Simpkins, but Lieutenant Rankin, who made a step back with a bewildered expression, holding two books.

“Oh — pardon me, Lieutenant,” Horatio said, closing the door a little and lowering his voice. “Sorry, I expected my servant. — What can I do for you?”

Rankin swallowed. “I am sorry to disturb you, only you are leaving, and you said—“ He broke off and for a moment looked like he would bolt, but then he straightened his shoulders and put up his chin. “Sir, I wanted to repay the good favour you have done me, and do as you asked.” He reached into his pocket to draw out a curved piece of steel, holding it out on his flat hand.

Horatio blinked at it in confusion. “Do… as I asked?”

“Yes, sir,” Rankin said. “When we traveled back from Edinburgh, you asked whether I could show you how to light a fire.”

“Oh — oh!” Horatio exclaimed, realization suddenly dawning: the strange object was the striker the lieutenant had used, in the skinning-shed. He took it and turned it over. “Yes, thank you! You're quite the godsend, Rankin — old Simpkins is keeping me waiting as usual. Come in, come in.” He pointed at the two volumes Rankin was still clasping to his chest. “And what about these? Have you brought more books to burn?”

He had meant it a jest, but Rankin did not laugh. “I... thought you might like to read this one," he said, proffering a dog-eared and rather shabby volume: _Ivanhoe_. "In my humble opinion, Sir Walter Scott is the greatest writer of the age.”

“He sure is," Horatio said, accepting the book without much enthusiasm to toss onto the bed, while eyeing the second one: much larger, very old, and as impressively gilded as a family bible, the title printed in gold leaf. "And what is that? _De domitando draconum?_ I hope you don't expect me to read that, too. I haven't three words of Latin..."

Rankin shook his head. "No, I don't," he said, very slowly, as if to himself. "I only brought this one for burning."


	14. The lake-serpent

“Captain Laurence! Why, ye seem in fine spirits this morning,” Agnes said, pausing from trying to feed her son a bowl of gruel. Behind her, one of the younger girls was sweeping the taproom. “Goin’ out anywhere?”

Horatio drew his hat, smiling. “Good morning! Yes, we’ve got our orders at last. Do you think Molly will see me?”

“For a fond farewell? I dinnae ken - haven’t seen ‘er down today,” Agnes shrugged, coaxing the young man’s hand out of the bowl. “She’s been well busy last night. Try yer luck.”

Horatio nodded and hurried up the creaking stairs, boots heavy on the worn-out steps. He had to duck his head under the low slanting roof of the first floor as he walked to Molly’s room at the far end. He knew she was usually up with the sparrows, but now, nobody answered his knocking.

“Molly!” he called, impatiently. “Are you awake?”

He drew out his pocket-watch. Ten minutes, fifteen at most, before he’d have to leave again for the covert, to supervise the final arrangements for the formation’s departure. “Molly, _je t'en prie_ , let me in… I’ll only be a moment, but I’ve something important to tell you!”

Finally, the bar was moved aside and the door opened a crack. Sarah, Molly’s older daughter, stood there, a skinny child of six with a squirming puppy-dog clasped under one arm.

“G’morning, sir,” she mumbled.

“Good morning, Miss Sarah,” Horatio said. “On my word, you have a new dog?”

“Sam at the smithy wanted to drown ‘em little dogs,” Sarah said, softly. “So I took one.”

“Well done, well done indeed — but where is your mam, and your sister? Are they well?”

She stared up at him without reply, entirely unlike her usual smiling, talkative self. The small window was shuttered, the room dark. Horatio gently moved her aside and stepped in. “Molly?” he called, increasingly uneasy, and nearly tripped over a piece of crockery on the floor before hitting his knee on the back of a chair that stood in an entirely unaccountable position. Cursing, he stumbled to the window and threw open the shutters. He turned and froze, appalled.

The room had been all but pillaged: every drawer pulled open, Molly’s small clothes-chest disemboweled, even the mattress and pillows of her bed slit open with the straw stuffing scattered, and in between, a dark spatter of blood trailing to the door. Sarah padded up to him and edged a small damp hand into his, just as the door of the adjoining chamber was opened and Molly stepped out.

“I am sorry, sir,” she said, “I did not hear you,” and stared at the floor.

“Molly — oh, thanks Heaven!” Horatio cried and hurried over to embrace her. But she stood perfectly stiff, rigid as a statue, and he quickly let go to look at her more carefully. She had wrapped her shawl tight and covered her hair with a linen cap, but her eyes were red from crying and on her neck, a large purple bruise spilled out from underneath the threadbare fabric.

“What detestable swine did this, Molly?” Horatio demanded, with mounting anger. “One of ours? One of the redcoats? Tell me! I will make them answer for it!”

Molly shook her head and hastily drew Sarah into the folds of her skirt, trying to cover the girl’s ears. “Please, sir, no…”

Horatio pointed to the trail of blood. “Molly, someone-“

“Ain’t none o’mine,” she whispered.

“You… hit back? Even worse! They might well come back prepared, and do you a worse harm!”

She bit her lip and shook her head. “Sir, I beg you — we shall do very well, only you must tell no-one.”

He closed his eyes a moment, trying to reign in his temper. “If you will not tell me who did this so I can hold them accountable, you cannot stay here, you must not! You know what most fellows are like… But there are still ships going out from the ports before autumn, to the Americas. I will make inquiries, and-”

He broke off, before committing himself impossibly: he could not see how to arrange it, from an Ayrshire fishing village. But Molly seemed to crumple at his words, sagging onto the chair.

“No,” she said. “I cannae go now, not for a long time, no. He’s took all me savings.”

Horatio stared at her. “What? …All? All the money you’d saved for your new life?”

She nodded.

“Good Heavens, Molly!” Horatio exclaimed, closing a fist. “Will you not tell me what miserable bastard…” She winced, drawing Sarah close. “Fine! I’ll pay for your passage then, and we will find a way-“

She rose to her feet, swaying, but resolved. “No, sir, no! I’ve fallen low, but I ain’t no beggar taking alms. He’s robbed me, but he’s got what he wants of me now. He won’t come back. We’ll manage.”

Horatio looked around the small room, the sheer brutality writ over it. “Molly, don’t play me for a fool. This was no ordinary robber, not even an ordinary drunkard. This was a deranged lunatic, or someone bearing a grudge, and I cannot tell you which one I like less.”

She stayed silent.

Horatio set to pacing the chamber. “Listen. I must leave. I haven’t a choice. Temeraire’s formation has been ordered to the coast. It might be Christmas by the time we return… but I cannot take you, there’s not even a quarter for the crews. So I will speak to the Admiral and see whether a room can be found in the castle — in fact, there’s no reason you cannot simply have my rooms, and-“

“No, sir!” she gasped. “I cannot… It would wholly ruin you to be sure!”

“Ruin _me_? Damn it, Molly, I have no patience for this sort of thing,” he snapped, turning around. “Listen. You‘re a damned fine woman, and if I had half a chance of being you a proper husband, I would not leave you on the shelf, no matter what people would have to say to it. — If you want, I’ll pronounce you my secret wife, or whatever else will shut them up, so-”

She stared at him in high alarm. “No, sir, no! Please don’t even say such things… ’tis blasphemy…”

Horatio very nearly threw up his arms. “Molly! Please, be reasonable! Think of your children. What if this wretch comes back? You must go away, if only for a while. — The clans, then, the lands north of Ness — Ricarlee’s lot! They take in people all the time.”

“But they don’t let ‘em leave again, sir,” Molly said, softly. “If ever I managed to save up enough for our passage, I’d lose it again trying to buy me freedom.”

“Well, given how things stand, you will have to accept someone’s protection, a man’s or a dragon’s, and the latter's no worse for sure.”

Molly kept her eyes to the floor. “There’s an old cottage where Alder Burn joins Loch Ericht,” she finally said, very quietly. “It might do, for a little… But no, I cannae go! — How will we eat? I cannot pay anyone…”

“I’ll take care of that,” Horatio scowled. “Loch Ericht — fine. I must go now, but I will find someone to take you there and bring you provisions — no!” he said with finality when she would have protested again, holding up his fire-scarred palm. “It is much too far for the children to walk, and I am in your debt, far deeper than you know — consider it some small recompense. Pack your things, please, and have the others know you are visiting family, or whatever you like. Someone will come for you tonight, I promise. Can you wait at the ladder-stile at six — you know the one I mean, on the road to the covert?”

She nodded, a silent tear sliding down her cheek, catching on the groove of her scar to trickle away sideways.

“Molly,” he said, and put a hand on her shoulder, cautiously. “Take heart, I beg. I’ll miss you, _mon amie_.”

She leaned against him a moment and then stepped back quickly, wiping her eyes. “Haste ye back, sir,” she whispered. “God bless.”

\- -

“You… want me to look after a poxed whore?” Stuart asked, incredulous.

“She is not a _poxed whore_ , but a woman all alone in the world and in need of a refuge,” Captain Laurence said, impatiently tapping his flying-goggles against his thigh. “I would do it myself if I could! I offered her my room, but she would not-“

“Good of her,” Stuart said, ungently.

“Rankin, someone abused her, beat her and robbed her of her savings. She wouldn’t tell me who, and Agnes did not know, either — said she’d never seen the fellow before. He may well come back. How can that leave you cold?”

Stuart shrugged. “She’s a harlot. You reap what you sow. If she wants to improve her lot, she may take up honest work any time she chooses.”

Captain Laurence stared at him. “Right,” he said, and turned away. “I see… Oh, I hardly know why I came here. I’ll ask Captain Gallagher then, should have done so right away, only she’s a trifle busier than you. Good day, lieutenant.”

“Captain Gallagher? No — no, wait, sir, you cannot!” Stuart gasped. ”Have you no honour?”

Captain Laurence turned again, narrowing his eyes. “I sure don’t know what you are insinuating, Rankin.”

Stuart glared back. No, the other really seemed entirely innocent of any guilt at the thought of entrusting his one mistress to the care of the other, unborn child or no… Captain Gallagher was no gentlewoman, could never be, but she had treated Stuart kindly, and he would not see her humiliated so. “I’ll do it,” he hissed.

Captain Laurence raised an eyebrow. “Will you, now?”

“Yes.”

“Where are your maps?”

Stuart jerked his chin at the table where Lowe’s maps were spread out. The captain himself was presently being handed aboard his dragon, well-wrapped in blankets: Veloxia had insisted on bringing him along to observe today’s drill, and Stuart had seen no reason to refuse her. Lowe waved at them, jovially, and Horatio Laurence smiled and waved back, though his face instantly darkened again when he glanced at the maps. “Goodness, Rankin, have you nothing better than an ordnance survey of ’47?”

He lifted a sheet as if suspecting another map hidden underneath, but finding none, he shook his head and pointed to a long narrow body of water labelled _Ericht_. “Here, only it runs more like this,” he said, taking up a pencil to redraw the shore, with a bold, determined line, “and the burn comes down like so,” adding more corrections, and drawing a cross, “and this is where I need you to take them.”

“Them, sir?”

“Miss Murray and her two young daughters. Their names are Sarah and Fanny. Speaking of which…”

Stuart pursed his lips in silent disapproval, but Captain Laurence paid him no attention, busily searching his pockets. “Here,” he said, proffering a small wooden dragon, “will you give this to the children, from me? I quite forgot in today’s rush… As for provisions, here, I think this should cover it? She would not take it from me.”

 _She clearly possesses more sense than you,_ Stuart thought, but he accepted the toy and the coins and tucked both away in the pocket of his only remaining coat, the expensive one from London. “Will that be all?”

“Yes,” Captain Laurence said, and then looked him straight in the eye. “Can I rely on you, Rankin? … She is very dear to me.”

Stuart looked away, swallowing — he’d heard all this before, Kensington’s study suddenly vivid before his eyes — and muttered, “Yes.”

“Thank you,” Captain Laurence said. “Any problem or news at all, send me a note through the couriers. — And stay away from the lake! Will you shake my hand?”

Stuart did so, as briefly as was polite. He felt an utter fool to think that only last evening, he had delighted in the touch of that hand, delighted enough to snatch it away and snap at the other not to touch him. And shortly afterwards, he’d abandoned even that pretense of coldness, perfectly happy for their shoulders to brush together when they’d knelt before the fireplace working the striker, Captain Laurence’s face lighting up with surprise at the crackle of sparks setting the parchment alight just as the old servant had entered, his hearty laugh drowning out the man’s confused apologies. Stuart had never had a friend; could not remember the last time someone had touched him without formal necessity, without the intention of inflicting pain or disciplining him, and over the novelty of it, he had quite forgotten himself. Well, it would not happen again, he thought. He would treat the whole wretched business in the light of an order like any other, and have it over without fuss or unnecessary loss of time.

Captain Laurence still stood there as if expecting some other pleasantry of farewell, but Stuart stayed silent. He rolled up the maps and tucked them into their oilskin quiver, threw it over his shoulder and walked to Veloxia’s waiting talon, the dragon fidgeting eager to be off. He checked Lowe’s straps, clicked on his carabiners, passed the signal, and kept his eyes fixed ahead as Veloxia jumped aloft. But when they had crossed the nearest ridge and he deemed himself too small to be discerned against the dragon’s back, he turned to watch Temeraire’s formation lift away into the sky in perfect order, a stupid unaccountable lump in his throat.

\- -

The afternoon was all rain, turning the road from Kinloch Laggan to the dragon-grounds into a muddy stream. Most folks stayed indoors, and Molly was glad of it as she dragged Sarah along. Fanny presently slept, wrapped in Molly’s shawl and dosed with a swallow of gin mixed in sugar-water, but Sarah put up all the fuss she could, weeping every step of the way and clasping both arms around her cursed mongrel dog.

“No!” she howled, “No, mam, no! I won’t leave ‘im! They’ll kill’im, they tried to before! Mam, I’m not-“

Molly turned around, grasped her shoulder and shook her. “We ain’t feeding that yappy dog a’yours through the winter when I scarce know how to keep you, missy! Put it down at once! At once, I say!”

She tried to snatch the pup away, but it bit her hand and Sarah set up a piercing shriek. Molly slapped her across the cheek to silence her and then unceremoniously picked her up to carry her along. But it would not do. Her wrist ached, her grip slipping, and Sarah writhed and fought. “Where are we goin’? I don’t want to! You’re cruel and I hate you, I hate you, I hate you…”

Molly stopped, breathing deep. “Aye,” she said, letting Sarah drop back into the puddles. Her every bone hurt. “Bye, lass.”

She shifted Fanny to her other hip and walked on, doggedly. _Come back to yer place,_ he’d told her, between blows. _Give me the money. ’tis mine— ’tis the law…_ Perhaps it was God’s punishment for wickedness and pride after all, Molly thought, tugging on the knotted blanket with the few of her belongings that had escaped destruction. Dreams were a dangerous thing to have. The vicar’s wife came to the brothel every week to read to them from the Gospels and encourage them to mend their ways. She had always warned them against attempts to defy God’s will, condemning the people departing for the dragon territories or, worse, the Inca realm, calling it a place full of sin with them all heathens and papists selling their souls to the devil… According to her, God meant them to be poor and earn heavenly reward through prayer and honest labour. But Molly had tried prayer and honest labour, and almost seen Sarah starve for it. Besides, Captain Laurence had always made it sound possible, with the confidence of a man with a dragon who would carry him across waters and mountains if only he commanded it.

“Mam! A dragon!” Sarah screamed that moment, and the next, had splashed through the puddles to huddle against Molly’s side. Molly put her arms around her daughter, looking up, and indeed: A yellow dragon had dropped from the low rainclouds, beating down to land on the path opposite them.

Molly swallowed. The outlines of dragons were a perfectly common sight in the sky and she’d seen them in the castle’s courtyard, dozing, but she’d never faced one so closely. The creature’s shoulder topped hers by more than a man’s height. It had eyes of a deep purple, a jagged line of bony spikes running down the length of its back, forelegs thick as tree trunks tipped in vicious talons, and teeth to match which Molly could see when it shook water off its wings and opened its mouth to say, with surprising civility: “Good evening, Miss.”

She didn’t dare move, from some deep-seated horror, and only stood clutching Sarah’s shoulders. A man climbed down the dragon’s side, wearing the aviators’ leather coat and tinted goggles. He did not approach them direct, but pulled off the glasses to wipe with great care before tucking them into a side-pocket and finally glancing aside to say, in a disinterested tone: “Miss Murray, I believe? Lieutenant Rankin of Veloxia. Captain Laurence gave orders for you to be conveyed to Loch Ericht.”

Molly nodded, staring at that hard, disdainful face with dreadful recognition. What had Captain Laurence been thinking? This was the very man he’d quarrelled with, the morning after the dance, the one who’d threatened to report her to the admiral. What would he demand, in return for his help?

“No, stay — stay still!” Sarah gasped that moment and tried to jump forward: making use of their distraction, the pup had squirmed free of her grasp and, likely mad with fright, scrambled between the dragon’s talons. Molly just about managed to catch her daughter’s apron and stop her from diving after it headlong.

The dragon swung its fearsome head down to peer at the dog.

“Don’t eat ‘im!” Sarah cried, trying to pull free. “Please! — Sir, please, tell your dragon not to eat ‘im!”

The young officer looked taken aback.

“Hold yer mouth, Sarah,” Molly hissed, mortified, and tried to draw her away. “Sir’s no patience for that mongrel a’yours. — I am sorry, sir. Pray pay it no mind. We cannae take it. ”

“Why, it is much too small for eating,” the dragon said, puzzled. “But it looks no weight at all, Rankin. I can carry it for sure.”

“That does not appear to be the problem at hand,” the officer said, still standing rigid, though his face looked less forbidding as he glanced at the dog.

He and Molly started as one when voices drifted over from the path beyond the cattle-stile: A knot of men were walking to the village from the covert, collars turned up against the rain. They had not seen them yet.

“Take it then, sir,” Molly said, hastily, “if you can.” She’d deal with the problem later, once Sarah slept: a sharp blow to the animal’s head, a pit behind the hut, a stone rolled on top. One day, her daughter would understand that sometimes, love must wear the mask of cruelty.

The officer nodded, and scooped the dog up with his gloved hand to tuck into a pouch on the dragon’s harness. Then he walked a short distance down the beast’s side to loosen a buckle and unfold a contraption that looked much like a step-ladder.

“Can you climb up here, Miss?” he asked. “You may hand me the child.”

\- -

The cottage by the shore of Loch Ericht was a sorry sight. The reed-thatched roof had fallen in, the door hung loose, and sheep had taken shelter inside, leaving their nits and droppings all over the stamped earth floor. Miss Murray walked in without surprise or hesitation, putting down her bundle, but Stuart stooped under the low doorway to look around dubiously, the sleeping girl still on his arm and his resolve to be on the way again wavering dangerously.

“We are to leave them here?” Veloxia said above him, astonished, and reared up on her hindlegs to peer through the patchy roof.

“Yes,” Stuart said, handing Fanny back to her mother and turning away.

“But the roof is broken!” Veloxia protested. “They will be wet and cold! It cannot be good for the hatchlings. Temeraire says-”

“Never knew you to be such a reformer,” Stuart muttered, silently cursing Temeraire, then put his head back inside. “Miss, can we assist with the roof?”

Miss Murray startled. “Why, sir, that is very kind — but we’ll manage, thank ye.”

“Some of these holes look very big to me,” Veloxia said, pushing her head clean through one. The woman stumbled backwards to stare up at her, terrified.

“Veloxia, stop that,” Stuart said, and the dragon thumped back onto all fours, looking wounded. Stuart went outside. The side of Veloxia’s rig had a tarpaulin awning, used to cover powder barrels during transport. He undid the reef-knots, one after another, to let it unfurl.

“We can rig this for now,” he heard himself say. He hardly knew how he should answer the harness-master, or Captain Lowe, but Veloxia looked so pleased with the suggestion that he drew his knife and cut through the anchorings. He sacrificed a length of rope, too, and gathered up a few rocks to tie to the sides of the sheet.

“Can you lift it up?” he asked Veloxia, and she obligingly picked up the weighted tarpaulin, placed it over the main beam of the roof and set to nosing it about in an attempt to cover the greatest number of holes, with rather a mathematical air. The overall effect looked not unlike the bark and netting wurlies the savages built in Australia, supplemented with stolen canvas, traded silk, or, once, a faded Union Jack, the blood-stains on it bleached away by the sun... they had razed that whole village to the ground. Stuart quickly turned away.

“That’ll do!” he called to Veloxia, and climbed up. “We must be off now, or they will regret our absence.”

He had almost reached his place on her shoulders, ready to depart, when he heard Sarah’s thin voice from below.

“Sir! Me… me dog! It’s not coming out.”

Stuart peered down the dragon’s other side, surprised: With baffling skill, Sarah had scaled the harness to reach the pouch where her pet had been stowed. The puppy had made its presence known by a few pitiful howls for the first part of the flight, but then settled down resigned to its fate, to the extent that Stuart had forgotten all about it. Now, it refused to let itself be removed again, snapping at the little girl’s fingers when she tried to lift it out.

Stuart climbed down and reached in a leather-gloved hand to extract it. “There,” he said, holding it out to Sarah.

She clung to the harness, eyes darting between him and Veloxia, and then whispered, with the quiet earnestness of childhood: “Mam wants to kill ‘im, cause we ain’t got food.”

Stuart paused, taken aback. The small knot of warmth still squirmed in his hand, a searching snout thrust into his palm, milk-teeth catching his thumb to chew on it. Some nondescript terrier-crossbreed, mottled black and white fur with a bigger black patch across one eye, barely old enough to be away from its mother.

“He likes ye, sir, and yer dragon,” Sarah added, her voice even thinner.

“Sarah!” Miss Murray’s voice rang out from the cottage. “Sarah, come here!”

“If you allow me, I will take care of your dog, Miss Sarah,” Stuart said, quickly and quite without thought. “He shan’t starve.”

“Really, sir?”

“I promise,” he said. “What is his name?”

“Sarah!” Miss Murray yelled again, closer now.

“Ain’t got none, sir. I only got ‘im yesterday,” Sarah said and jumped down from the harness just as Miss Murray rounded Veloxia’s side, a steep furrow on her forehead.

“What are ye doin’, lass? Bothering the officer?” she asked.

“No, Miss,” Stuart said, hastily placing the dog back into the pouch. “I will take my leave now, if you please, and return tomorrow for the roof.”

She looked at him surprised. “For the… roof, sir?”

“Yes,” Stuart said. “Sarah? Come here!”

She trotted up again, eyes fixed on the ground with rather a guilty air. “Aye?”

“Captain Laurence asked me to give you this, with his compliments,” Stuart said, reaching inside his coat to produce the toy dragon dangling on its string. Sarah stood on tip-toes to accept it, eyes widening when she saw what it was.

“Why, sir, it is beautiful! Thank ye ever so much!” She gave him a smile, and then clutched it to her chest and scurried away before her mother could catch her.

Miss Murray turned again, relief and suspicion warring on her tired face. “Sir,” she said quietly, “I thank ye for your kindness, but… pray don’t put ideas in my lass’s head, regarding the dragons. It won’t do her no good.”

\- -

“Lieutenant Rankin? Post!” the courier’s small ensign cried, tossing an envelope next to Stuart’s bowl before hurrying on to the next table. Stuart frowned. He had no regular correspondents, and could barely make out the scrawled address on the envelope. 

He swallowed down the last of his porridge and tucked the letter into his pocket, intending to read it on the wing. When he rose from the mess table, the puppy raised his head and scurried after him, tail wagging, bat-ears pricked up. Dot, as Stuart had grown used to calling the creature, was ever eager to go to the clearings, devolving into sheer yapping delight at the sight of Veloxia, and the dragon was equally partial. She shared her dinner, let him sit in her talons and insisted he fly with them, tongue lolling in the wind, and though Stuart could not wholly approve of the spectacle, he was glad to have everyone believe Veloxia had simply adopted a stray. The crew adored their new mascot, in any case. The runner brought it his milk, Gordon and Farlane caught rats for it to play-hunt, and the harnessmaster had fashioned a small leather harness with a strap and carabiner for it to be latched. Yet at the end of every day, Dot trotted after Stuart all the way to the now-deserted dormitory to sleep at the foot of his bunk and, eventually, on top of it. On first waking to a wet nose resting against his arm, Stuart’s first impulse had been to shove him off. “Cannot you leave your hairs on Garrick’s cot over there, little fellow?” he’d muttered, sleepily, and the dog had opened an eye, wagged his tail, and presented his spotty pink belly in utter trust, and Stuart had sighed, turned over and gone back to sleep. 

Crossing the courtyard, his thoughts wandered to the cottage, as had become his habit. The evenings were growing markedly shorter now, the interminable summer evenings failing just when he needed them. The single room had been cleaned and smoked out, a store of wood chopped up and stacked against the southern wall. They had replaced the rotten rafters and were a good way into rethatching the roof, with reeds he and Miss Murray had cut from the loch, bundled and dried. But the fireplace was still drafty and poor, even after Veloxia had given it a brush with a sapling, and there was almost no furniture, Miss Murray having brought none and him no hand with a hammer or saw. The children slept on a pile of old military blankets Stuart had found in the harness-sheds, their diet a monotony of turnips and gruel, and their clothing, while sufficient in summer, looked woefully inadequate for what Stuart imagined the Northern winter to be. 

“Good morning,” someone said, stiffly, and Stuart looked up. He had reached Veloxia’s clearing, and there, right at the entrance, was Lieutenant Dobson, startling when Ensign Gordon rushed past to pick up Dot and carry him to his harness-pouch. 

“Good morning,” Stuart said. “Gordon! The dog can walk! — What is it, Dobson?” 

Dobson quit his staring and assumed a vaguely defensive stance, crossing his arms and raising his chin. “My health is tolerably restored, and Blythe says I’m fit to fly.”

“Right,” Stuart said. “Farlane! What is that? Stop feeding him cake! It makes him sick. — Fly, then, Mr Dobson. I do not see you need my permission. You may tell Farlane to stop stuffing the dog and instead run you through today’s manoeuvres while I see to that mess of a harness over there. I’ll answer any remaining questions afterward. Is that agreeable to you?”

Dobson looked taken aback, his hands dropping. “Yes… yes, perfectly agreeable!” he stammered, before giving a curt bow and turning away.

They joined the drill shortly after. Procella had by now mastered the fixed targets on the ground and been set to moving ones — at first, straw-stuffed sacks dragged across the ground using ropes, not dissimilar to the bunyips’ bait, but by now, moving, zigzagging, panicked sheep and goats. They were harder to strike, and the shrivelled carcasses left in the wake of a successful run had the dragons mutter about waste. But it had to be done, if they were to go after enemy troops one day without strafing their own. Veloxia had been promoted from rear-guard to the more dangerous position at Procella’s left flank, in point-blank range of the acid, while the Reaper Pugnatio and Cerberus, a Grey Copper of a quiet and obliging temperament, no matter his name, took the role of mock-attackers. They went through the order of attack, and Procella beat up, the other dragons assuming their places around her. At the wave of a flag, the sheep were released, and the chase was joined. 

Veloxia was in her element once again, wheeling through the sky in the Longwing’s wake, hissing and clawing at any attacker who dared close in. Procella was in fine form too, spitting with great accuracy, two, three targets within the first pass, and they cheered her. Stuart had to restrain himself from grinning as he patted Veloxia’s neck, and she gave a pleased rumble, wheeled around for the next pass — and almost collided with Procella mid-air. She squalled in surprise and back-winged, frantically, but Procella paid her no heed. Quite ignoring her own flag-signals, the Longwing shot forwards and straight to the ground, leaving Veloxia and her wing-mate circling confused and all but barrelling poor Pugnatio out of the way before releasing a great spray of acid that formed a seething circle around her as she landed. 

“Veloxia, down, carefully,” Stuart called, wondering whether the dragon had been taken ill.

However, when they descended, he saw Procella double her head back in great anxiety. “Lucy!” she cried. “Lucy, what is it?”

Captain Gallagher climbed down, a little slowly, and walked to her dragon’s head. “Nothing, silly! Look, I’m perfectly well.”

“I heard them say you’re not! I heard them say you’re bleeding!”

“Well, I cut my finger on a piece of your armour, earlier on — I’ll have the harness-men look at it later. Fie you, Prossy. You hit poor Pugnatio there. What were you thinking?”

“Show me your hand,” Procella demanded, tail lashing in high agitation. “And pray take off your coat, so I can see you properly. Is the egg hurt?” 

“Prossy, this is ridiculous-“

“Captain, please.” Procella’s first lieutenant, a tall, willowy woman by the name of Nicholls, had climbed down with a few other officers. “Reassure her, and us.”

Captain Gallagher glared at her, angrily, and then snapped back the slit tail of her flying coat. A great bright stain of blood trailed down her thigh, stark against the light fabric of her breeches. 

“Captain,” Nicholls said, into the stunned silence, “you must lie down and rest, at once.”

“Nonsense!” Captain Gallagher snorted, turning to the round of dragons and officers. “Damn you, whoever started bleating about this! Quit the cosseting, all of you. Procella, put me up. We’ll carry on.” 

“Lucy-“ her lieutenant began, but her words were drowned out by Procella’s hoarse roar, echoing back from the valley slopes, and the next moment, the dragon had snatched her Captain up in her talons and lifted away with all speed, leaving behind a stunned knot of crew members. 

“Ought we fetch a doctor?” one of the aviators muttered. 

“No use trundling one over all the way from Fort William, if she’ll refuse to see him,” replied another.

“I’ll talk to her,” Lieutenant Nicholls said, with decision. “And have the surgeons look in. She must have a care for herself and the child, for her dragon’s sake above all. Can someone take me back to the castle?”

This was met with a general murmur of approval. “Veloxia’s our fastest,” Pugnatio’s captain said, running his hands over the bleeding scratches on his dragon’s side. “Though I need to get _him_ seen too as well.” 

Stuart nodded. “We can take four. Shall we pick you out of there, lieutenant?”

“No, that’s alright,” Nicholls said, cautiously stepping out of the blackened circle. “Thankee. — Burns, Bradshaw, Cavendish, you come with me.”

They climbed up nimbly, Midwingman Cavendish the last of the four, teary-eyed. 

“Oh, the Captain will hold it against me for sure,” Stuart heard her sob as she and Nicholls latched on close behind him. “You heard what she said… But she herself told me it isn’t right, that it should not happen in her state, and-“

“No, you did right,” Stuart said, cutting her off. “Our first duty is the safety of the dragons, and thus the captains, whether they like to hear it or not.”

“Precisely,” Nicholls sighed, and from the corner of his eye, Stuart could see Dobson turn to look at him with fresh consternation, but he chose not to notice it. 

They did not quite manage to catch up with Procella’s frantic haste, but descended into the clearings shortly after her. Nicholls thanked them again and hurried away with the others.

“You may leave my harness on,” Veloxia piped when Dobson would have waved over the ground crew who sprang up surprised from their cards and pipes. “Lieutenant Rankin and I have places to go, and he’ll take it off after!” 

Dobson looked confused, and Stuart would happily have sunk into the ground. He had wondered whether he might contrive to use the now-free afternoon to return to Loch Ericht and finish the roof, but he’d given up the thought, with Dobson bound to go running to Captain Lowe to report it. So far, he’d excused their frequent evening departures with wanting to put her through extra paces to further improve her speed, but for a half-day, it was an odd excuse indeed.

“No,” he said to Veloxia. “Not today, Velly, thank you.”

“Oh, whyever not? — No, leave that on!” She stepped back from the harness crew’s hands. “We’ve still got to-“

“Fine!” Stuart said, quickly, before she could blurt out more. “Dobson, pray give Captain Lowe my compliments, and beg him to excuse us this afternoon. — We still have powder and shot enough to take the juniors through a few volleys in the shooting-range, I believe, to make use of your time.” 

Dobson frowned.

\- -

Sarah ran up to meet them as soon as Dot’s bark announced their landing, and Miss Murray stepped out from the hut’s entrance, wiping flour off her hands. 

“You’re earlier than usual, sir,” she said, apprehensive. “I hope there’s no bad news o’any kind?” 

“No,” Stuart said. “Only our training was cut short today, so I thought we might make use of the daylight and finish the roof.” 

“Will ye eat with us?” she asked. “I’ve got some bannocks on the griddle.” 

Stuart would have liked to demur — he knew how sparse her stores were — but his stomach was rumbling, and it struck him as rude to decline the invitation. “With… pleasure, Miss,” he said. 

The small room of the cottage was cramped, but the weather was still mild and dry, so Veloxia pulled down the awning from the roof to spread on the grass, and Miss Murray brought out the food: smoky oatcakes in a small basket of woven reeds, and a pot of turnip and potato stew fragrant with the scent of wild thyme.

“What is this?” Stuart asked, pointing to his spoon. Veloxia was licking out the pot, and at her side, he noticed Dot gnawing on a small bone. 

“Rabbit, sir!” Sarah said, with a bright smile. “Snared it myself, on Gael-Charn, where they’ve all dug their burrows!”

“Right born poacher, that girl is,” Miss Murray said, shoulders hunched forward. “I’ve told ‘er not to do it again, sir.” 

“Hmm,” Stuart said, turning his attention back to the wooden bowl and dipping his wedge of the still-warm bread. It tasted better than any of the polished dishes served at his uncle’s house. 

When Sarah and Miss Murray went to scour the dishes by the lake’s shore, he and Veloxia applied themselves to thatching. The dragon handed the reed bundles up, Stuart placed them in position, she tamped them down, and he tied them, in two layers. Climbing about and tugging the ropes tight, he broke out in a sweat, and discarded first his coat and then his shirt as well. 

“You know,” Veloxia said while they worked, “I have been thinking. If I don’t eat all my sheep, I may keep some to give to Miss Murray, and then they can shear them for wool, next spring. And perhaps they will have lambs, so there will still be sheep to eat. It is much like earning interest, if you consider it to the end.”

“Ah,” Stuart said, wiping his brow. Just as Captain Laurence had predicted, Veloxia had grown keenly interested in her accounts. “I’m yet to see a dragon capable of saving up his sheep… but you needn’t trouble yourself. The animals sold to the Corps are usually beyond giving good wool, or lambing.” 

Still the offer moved him, somehow. 

The sun was sinking when they finished the work, the slanted rays turning the purple of the heather-clad slopes to a glowing orange. Stuart had just replaced his clothes and rolled up the tarpaulin to stow against Veloxia’s side, when he saw Sarah caper past with her toy dragon, and Fanny following her on unsteady legs, stretching her chubby hands after the toy. Stuart straightened up, surprised. He’d never seen her walk before.

“Miss Murray!” he called. “Miss, look!”

She came hurrying from the cottage, a spoon in her hand and a worried expression on her face. 

“Look!” Stuart said, grinning. “She’s walking, wholly _walking_!”

“Oh… yes, so she be,” Miss Murray said, faintly. At the sound of her mother’s voice, Fanny turned, lost her balance, and toppled over into the heather, setting up a startled cry. Stuart stepped over to pick her up.

“I can walk, too!” Sarah said, huddling against his leg. “I can walk, too, sir, and much further than ‘er! Will ye go walking with me?” 

“Sarah, stop it!” Miss Murray said, hurrying up to take Fanny back from Stuart’s arms. “Sir’s about to leave, because he’s got more important work to see to.”

“I… I don’t think I do, actually,” Stuart said, and, after a brief pause: “Miss Sarah, I should be honoured to walk a turn with you. Will you take my arm?”

He held it out, mock-officious, and she giggled and tried to reach up. 

“You’re too small, my lady,” he said, and reached down to lift her onto his shoulders. “And light as a feather. You’ll have to eat more before I can present you at court.” Sarah squealed with delight, holding up her dragon and pulling the string to flap its wings, and Dot bounded around them barking. 

“Where now, Miss?” Stuart asked. “The lake is looking beautiful this evening, I daresay.”

“Yes! To the lake!” Sarah commanded. “Veloxia, Mam, come!”

“I… no, no, I’ll finish up inside,” Miss Murray said, stepping back.

“Please!” Sarah cried, and her mother threw a harried look at Stuart, before casting her eyes down.

“If sir doesn’t object.”

“I don’t, Miss,” Stuart said. “You’re not keeping me from anything, I assure you.” 

“Aye,” Miss Murray said, quietly, and wrapped Fanny into her plaid to put onto her back.

They walked down to the shore and then along it, the waves lapping gently and the crickets chirping all around them. Dot raced ahead, barking at a handful of gulls, and after a while, Stuart set Sarah down and showed her how to skip flat stones across the water, counting the number of bounces, _two, three, four,_ hurtling away towards the horizon.

“Shall we walk on?” he heard Miss Murray ask, after a while. “Sarah — enough o’these stones! Ye got to be careful, or ye’ll rouse the guardian.” 

Stuart frowned. “The guardian?”

“Yes, sir,” Miss Murray said, with perfect earnestness. “Why, all the lochs have them. Great big creatures like dragons without wings that dwell in the depths. The sight o’them is rare, but they say it foretells great joy or great sorrow, only you never know which. Are they not seen at all, where you hail from?” 

Stuart scoffed. The Australian water-holes had guardians of quite a different sort. “Nonsense, Miss Murray. I beg you not to credit such folk superstitions, or to tell them to your impressionable daughters.” 

“Why, I saw one myself,” she said, quietly. “At the head o’Laggan when I first found I was with child, and the next day my father beat me out of the house and laid my face bare to the bone.”

“Well,” Stuart said, after a pause, “your mind must have been in a heightened state of agitation, causing you to misremember.” 

She did not protest, and only pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders. They walked for a while longer, the loch’s surface growing tranquil enough to mirror all the violet and red of the sky against the darkening hills, and Veloxia’s hide a pure gold when she took off for a short caper in the sky. Stuart stood still a moment, watching her spiral about in the dying light. Perhaps great joy was not his lot, he thought, no one great, all-consuming bliss. But perhaps even he might have small happinesses like this one, and string them along, and that might be enough to live by. 

\- -

“What else do you need done?” Stuart asked, when they had arrived back at the cottage, Sarah stumbling tired and Fanny fast asleep. “I can purchase chickens in the village, if you know how to build a coop… What is the state of your stores? Let me see them.” 

“Sir-“ Miss Murray began, with an abortive attempt to bar the door, but Stuart stepped inside take a look around. The fire had burnt low, her interrupted cookery still hanging on the chain. The roof looked neat, even from the inside, and the sacks of barley, oats and turnips in their niche felt dry. A few bushels of herbs were hung from the rafters, and next to them — quite giving her the lie — not just one, but three rabbits, and a glossy-feathered grouse. Stuart smiled at the dark. _Clever girl._

“Sir,” Miss Murray said behind him, a frightened note creeping into her voice. “Sir, I beg — she brought 'em dead, and I did not see the sense in letting 'em go to waste… I know it’s Corps land, and of course I’ve told ‘er not to do it again, sir, I swear! Pray do not report us, I beg-” 

“What do you mean?” he asked, turning. “Report you? Why?” He shook his head. “I’ll come back tomorrow, and bring you more salt.” 

“Sir, you need not-“ 

“I want to, Miss, please.”

She looked at him apprehensive. “Sir, you’ve already done more than I can ever repay. I beg you not to increase my debt still further.” And, biting her lip, she added: “If it is what ye want, you may stay awhile now. The children be sleeping.” 

And when he stared, confused, she put the plaid aside, and stepped up to kiss him. Her voice had been timid, but the caress was not: seasoned and practised, bestowed many times before, and never with any feeling, her eyes wholly withdrawn. 

Stuart backed away sharply. Some part of him felt betrayed, revolted even; another, ashamed. He recognized the stratagem: her body here, an object offered for use, her soul, miles away. He’d used it himself, often enough, when it came to the eradication of another village or dissident fort in the name of the Crown, his mind taking refuge in a romance or adventure story while his hands did the bloody work demanded of him.

He was suddenly, abruptly aware that many fellows would think her desirable, scar-face or no, with those full lips and breasts and thighs. Did she think he’d done all he had by means of a cheap transaction, in return for… 

“No, thank you,” he snapped, striving to keep his voice level and cold, “you needn’t trouble yourself.”

She shrunk back in turn, looking even more wary and fox-like than usual. “But… why else?” she whispered. “Why else do ye help us? Why else are ye kind to my children?”

“Because,” he began, strangled, as he pushed his way past her to the door, “because… I’ve got orders, and I carry them out.”

“I’m sorry!” she said, raising a hand after him, “Please, sir, I dinnae mean to-“

“Neither did I,” he said, sharply. “Good night, Miss. The stores you’ve laid should last a fortnight. I’ll deliver more after then.” 

\- -

It was almost fully dark by the time they landed in Veloxia’s clearing, only to find Captain Lowe sitting on an upturned barrel smoking his pipe.

“Sir… have you been waiting all evening?” Stuart asked, quickly climbing down. “I’m so sorry if I’ve-“

“No, no,” Lowe hummed, good-humouredly. “I took a walk out here after dinner — all by myself. Look here,” he said, drawing aside his cloak to reveal a wooden leg, shiny and burnished, strapped to his stump. “And, lieutenant,” he added more quietly when Veloxia was done nosing it over and expressing her admiration, “I wanted to speak to you alone.” 

“What about, sir?” Stuart asked, silently cursing Dobson. 

“Well,” Lowe said, and added, quietly: “Veloxia tells me you have taken an interest in a young woman.”

Stuart froze from undoing the harness, feeling ever more the colossal fool. He had made Veloxia promise not to tell anyone, but who was he to demand secrecy from her own captain. “I am sorry for neglecting my duties and overstepping my bounds with your dragon, sir,” he said, stiffly. 

“Oh, no, no! I Not at all. A sweetheart’s a splendid thing to have, and it’s plain she’s doing you good.” Stuart stood rigid, and Captain Lowe knocked out his pipe, a little awkwardly, before starting up again: “Well, looking at me now, I'm sure you'll think me nothing but a fat, lubberly fellow.”

Stuart wanted to protest, but Lowe raised a hand. “Well, I wasn’t always. In my youth, you might have called me hot-headed. There was a girl at Skipton I used to dance with, my sister’s friend and the sweetest creature under the sun. I never made her any promises, of course, having signed my soul away to the Australian division for my chance with an egg, and my dragon’s the dearest thing to me now. But Veloxia is a Majesty’s beast in the service, and once my nephew arrives, I must give her up — it is the way of the world, and I knew it all along… But grounded, one has a lot of time to think, and sometimes, I wonder what might have been…” He shifted, with an apologetic smile. “Well, I do not mean to bore you. What I am saying is this. I would never suggest you sacrifice your prospects with Caesar, if that is where your happiness lies. But if there’s someone who has a claim on your head and heart and soul, that’s no trifling matter. And sometimes it’s worth putting up with a bit of… fuss.” He shrugged, looking up. “I’ve no Earl for uncle, but I’m not entirely without influence, myself. If you should prefer a station in Scotland, I could-“

“I don’t,” Stuart interrupted him, sharply. “I thank you for your consideration, captain, but no, it is entirely out of the question. As I said, I am sorry for keeping Veloxia from you all these evenings, but I assure you it shan’t happen again. Good evening,” he said, turned, and fled, a terrible discourtesy, but he could not help it. 

He felt his face burning and his heart racing, and he could not even say why. Of course Captain Lowe had entirely the wrong notion — but why did his words still bother him so, a finger into a festering wound? No matter Miss Murray’s incredulity, he _had_ wanted nothing in return, nothing but those snatched hours of innocence, a piece of lost childhood returned.

And yet, it was as though her practical offer of _payment_ had torn through all his hard-won peace, reminding him he was in possession of a body after all, a living, breathing thing capable of more than hunger and thirst and anger and fatigue, but of hopes and desires hitherto uncharted, and of a great, lowering loneliness. He wanted to be touched, he longed to be loved, but not so, by means of a cheap transaction… Captain Laurence had laughed at him for declining to marry for lack of love, and even he had wondered at himself for claiming such a thing; but now, he knew it was nothing but the truth. He had sometimes found a species of comfort in the thought that even if his parents’ marriage might have been loveless, it had made practical sense and afforded his mother, a Welsh convict, a measure of comfort and protection she would never have enjoyed otherwise. But he could not help remembering Molly Murray’s face now, so wary and cold even as she’d kissed him, and wonder whether such a bargain could ever be worth the price. 

Dot caught up with him, yapping, and Stuart would almost have kicked out at the dog. “Sssh,” he hissed, picking him up and holding his snout shut. “You’ll rouse all the dragons.” 

It was time to turn in, but the thought of the empty dormitory was unbearable. Stuart turned into the path that led from the clearings to the empty training grounds by the loch, Temeraire’s former haunt, where a row of planted flags now hung limp in the still night air. The moon was almost full in the sky, and a mist rose from the lake when he reached the shore, the mirror-still water mercilessly reflecting his face, his mother’s black curls and his father’s nose and cheeks, and his very own tired eyes. He picked up a pebble, weighed it and tossed it across the water, _eight, nine, ten_ skips, and the image blurred in rippling circles. Dot gave a delighted bark and jumped after the stone, straight into the water.

“Dot!” Stuart shouted, startled from his thoughts. “Dot, you fool, come back!” He looked around, picked a stick from the surf and waved it, Dot’s preferred prey. “Here, look! You can fetch this! Dot!” 

He whistled, piercingly, but the silly creature was still paddling away from him, panting towards a long-sunk stone. Stuart cursed. 

He had made a point of visiting the baths almost every morning before dawn, and could by now swim ten lanes without pause. But the warm, shallow pool was no match for Loch Laggan. He remembered the cold currents dragging at him, the snaring plants reaching up. _Stay away from the lake._ But what had he to lose, save that little dog? 

He threw aside his coat and boots, pulled his shirt over his head and stepped out of his trousers, throwing everything aside in a messy heap, and plunged after the animal. The piercing cold was almost a blessing on his flushed skin, and when the water rose to his chest, he gave himself over, pushed away from the sandy ground, and swam. 

He kept his head as high as he could, coughing when a gust of wind stirred up small waves to wash into his face, but he fought down the mounting panic and kept his eyes fixed on the small shape industriously paddling away from him. 

“Dot!” he cried again. “Dot, stay!” 

He redoubled his efforts, straining, and finally managed to close in, reaching out to grasp the dog’s collar. “What is this, you cretin?” he gasped. “Come, we’ll go home.” Dot wagged his tail in the water and tried to lick him across the face. “Stop that. — What, you like it in here?” 

Dot barked, his tail wagging harder. 

Stuart let go of the collar, relaxing a little. Nobody would see them here, and Dot kept himself afloat with ease.

He turned over to let himself drift, arms outspread, the heat and confusion gradually seeping away into the water. Above, the Pleiades winked through a hole in the clouds, a familiar sight next to the Northern constellations.

Something nudged his back: a cold, smooth touch. He spun around, looking for Dot — but the dog was splashing about a little further out, playfully snapping at a feather drifting on the water. What else if not his nose — a fish, an eel? Reason told Stuart he had nothing to fear, but dread still gripped him. “Dot!” he called again. “Dot, come, let us go.” 

He tried to swim towards the dog to grasp the collar afresh, but suddenly the water before him bubbled and churned, waves rushing out to slosh into his face, taking breath and sight both and throwing him into a scrambling panic. He beat his arms frantically to stay afloat, snorting and blinking away water, and his heart leapt to his throat when he saw a great muscular body rear up from the water, mottled green and brown with a silver-white belly, scarce ten feet away. The creature’s head was small and triangular, only slightly broader than the enormous serpentine neck. A pair of dripping barbels trailed from its jaws and a line of thorny spikes crowned its nose, rising and falling again when it drew a snorting breath through a row of gill-slits on its neck. For a moment, it fixed Stuart with a great pair of lantern-eyes. Then it blew another spray of water and plunged back down, a long coiling body with two pairs of broad flippers curving from the seething water for a heartbeat, rising and falling, then a glitter of scales in the depths, and it was gone.

Terror barred all thought, all doubt at his skill. Stuart plunged across to grasp Dot and prevent him being dragged under by the eddies left in the creature’s wake, and beat back to the shore in a graceless sequence of splashing strokes, heedless of the great gulps of water he swallowed. He only permitted himself a short pause when he’d scrambled a good way onto solid ground, out of the monster’s reach, and then crept over to the pile of his clothes, sagging down next to it. He picked up his coat to bundle the wet and panting dog into it, and the cloth crackled under his hands. With numbed and trembling fingers, he reached into the pocket, and drew out the letter. He had all but forgotten about it. 

It was scrawled in the most unlovely hand he’d ever seen, some words near indecipherable in the sparse moonlight. The message, so far as he could make out, ran: 

_Ball’trae, 17th Sept, 1837_

_Rankin —_

_What have you done? Did you intend to rob me of sleep? Is this another part of your Scheme to give me the character of a Fool and impudent? If so, I will have you Know it is answering damnably well._

_I’m no great reader, and will admit I forgot all about your book for a good long merciful While. Then, on some devilish whim, I took it up last Thursday, and then could not help Reading it through over the course of the last few nights, Causing me — I am sure you will be Gladdened to know — to almost keel over into my soup-bowl aboard the_ Chatham _for lack of sleep this very evening, and that when I had made such an effort with my clothing on account of the Corps' reputation, etc etc (though I believe my tie would not have satisfied You). AND having made a right cake of myself, I was still to discover the true depth of your Nefarious ways, in finding the book you’d lent me a Volume One Of Three._

_Send the second volume, I demand and order you to (if you can be induced to part with it), for I am Suffering._

_On the assignment, the rockets are firing just as they ought, though the sailors started out impertinent to boot. For lack of accommodation, Temeraire came up with a scheme of fashioning caves in the cliffs by means of his Roar, which, fed up with the muttering and complaining, I permitted at last, only to find I ought to have done so right from the start: Temeraire succeeded at blasting away a prodigious amount of rock from the shore and the Island of Ailsa Craig, and though the fishermen were greatly perturbed and I have lost my Lodgings, the Navy fellows have suddenly grown Exceedingly civil, culminating in the very dinner I’ve just been obliged to excuse myself from. So I must still call it a Success, and shall encourage him to do it again._

_Yours, etc._

_Horatio Laurence_

_P.S. Temeraire did not enjoy your Book. He proceeded to point out the flaws in the Story, viz. The improbability of a father not recognizing his own Son, and the general lack of Dragons, and the fact that the Disinherited Knight was quite Obviously Ivanhoe all along. I believe I shall keep the second Volume to myself — Pray send it soon, and I shall return you the first._

_P.P.S. Dragon’s caves are not as uncomfortable as one would imagine them to be, but curled up in one with a Rain coming on outside, I am very glad of my newfound ability to light my own Fire._


	15. Armagh

_Laggan covert, 2nd Oct, 1837_

  
_Sir,_   
  
_your friend continues well._   
_I enclose the Volume you requested._   
  
_Respectfully_   
_Lt Rankin_

  
  
Temeraire snorted and twitched in his sleep, and Horatio startled, quickly putting a hand over the letter. But the dragon only curled tighter around his huddled crew and then slept on peacefully within the cave of his own making, the low glow of the fire playing over his glossy scales.

Horatio listened to the deep, regular breathing for another minute before he dared to raise the letter again, finding, once more, nothing beyond formal politeness. Frowning, he reached for the book. He was on the fifth chapter of the second volume of _Ivanhoe_ , his favourite, Locksley, had just rejoined the fray, but he could not keep his thoughts from straying. He had hoped for nothing in particular, Horatio told himself. But for one’s pains and cramped hand, one might have expected a more civil reply.

He tucked the book into his pocket, took the argand lamp, and walked to the mouth of the cave. 

“Go inside,” he told Lieutenant Ingram. “I’ll take the watch.”

The lieutenant eyed him, uncertain, as Horatio walked to the edge of the rocky ledge. "Sir-"

“What?” Horatio said, looking over his shoulder. “Come on, man, step inside. You don’t need to watch me piss.”

Ingram muttered a hasty apology and retreated.

Alone at last, Horatio turned to face seawards again. In the ink-dark night, he could make out the lanterns of the Navy squadron at anchor, rising and falling in the swell. The village of Ballantrae on the far shore was almost swallowed up by the dark, and a good hundred yards beneath his feet, the waves crashed at the rocky shore of Ailsa Craig. He balanced along the edge awhile, enjoying the thrill of the sheer rock-face dropping into darkness beside him, demanding his full attention and forcing all thoughts into simple, manageable certainties. He had made a request. Rankin had met it. There was nothing to feel disappointed about.

After a while, he sat down at the edge, legs dangling. A cold wind blew from north-west, and he turned up the collar of his flying-coat, his father's gift upon his making lieutenant: a beautiful Chinese piece of black leather and blue silk, with small dragons embossed on the hems. Most of their tiny jewel-eyes had been lost with years of hard use, save for one beast winking from the left sleeve which Horatio, consequently, liked to keep turned up — unsettling to feel watched by one’s garment. He had considered prising the stones off, a few times, but always shrunk back from damaging the heirloom on purpose.

He took out the book to finish the chapter, turned another page, and sat up sharpy.

He rubbed his eyes and pulled the lantern closer — no, his muddled head had not fooled him. At the end of the chapter, all along the margin of the page and continuing onto the next, were fine, neatly pencilled words, in what he instantly recognized for Rankin’s neat hand.

 _I, too, sir, am no friend of idle flattery,_ Horatio read, involuntarily holding his breath.

_I should not have wanted you to feign enthusiasm for a book you’d never opened only to Tease me and show me up for a fool, though I could not have thought ill of you for it: I have often been told books such as this are escapist Fantasies fit for corrupting the Mind. If, however, your letter was Sincere, I should like to repay the courtesy, even if your Opinion of me, even in the capacity of Enemy, shall be damaged beyond repair._

_As you know, I was raised in our Australian colony, which has been at war for as long as I can remember, a War between our forces (of which my father, Capt Rankin, rose to supreme commander) and those of the so-called Federation in the north, a loose association of smugglers, runaway convicts, aboriginals, and other scoundrels afraid of the law, upheld by support from the Dutch and, most importantly, the Chinese._

_Not true, you will Cry, China is no foe to the British — and indeed they would never declare themselves openly hostile, being remarkably skilled at Subterfuge. But they would still cripple our trade and send weapons and other Comfort, most importantly dragons, which no amount of mud-painting can disguise for native beasts. There are no dragons in Australia, the bunyip breed being entirely unsuitable to human management._

_The frontier Wars have not been much in the papers here, I gather. My cousins knew nothing of it, and even my Lord Uncle’s remarks on the topic have been so fanciful as to betray his innocence, which is probably for the Best, amounting as they did (and still do) to a series of attacks and pillagings, burnings and Poisonings, and a few particularly bloody engagements like the Wiradjuri’s raid across the Blue Mountains one Christmas that took us unawares. It was the greatest inroad they ever gained, resulted in the burning of half of Sydney town, and claimed my mother’s life. A band of Plotters was found guilty of high treason and executed at Paramatta in 1822._ _I have been Witness to plea after plea for support being sent to Whitehall, only to attract no Reply, and before long my father fixed upon Admiral Laurence with particular hatred, calling him the Chinamen’s parliamentary Agent. My Object is not to make excuses, or draw from You some Defense. I merely wish to make clear that, knowing nothing of his Former life, and Levitas in Particular, I supposed both my father’s methods, and his loathing of yours, well founded and justified upon these grounds._

_My father’s dragon Caesar, to whom I was assigned, has never much liked me. My earliest clear Memory is of him releasing a poisonous snake in the garden where I was playing, though Captain Rankin never believed my Mother when she accused the beast, and for a long time, I sought the Fault with myself, for being very easily taken with air-sickness. Caesar commonly called me Timid, or ugly, or otherwise worthless, though never when Father could overhear. One day on Campaign, I had Borne his slights and insults all day, and decided to make a show of my bravery. I walked to him and ordered him to Take me aboard, and if he did not he was a Vicious and Disobedient beast and I would tell father. I should have been, perhaps, forewarned by his very great Eagerness to comply, making me feel that, for once, I had hit upon the right tone to use with him. So I climbed up and away we went, and I issued commands I‘d hear Father use and for a while, he followed. But once out of sight, he stopped paying me the slightest Heed, beating away further and further, laughing at my pleas and tears, and finally set me down in the red desert and abandoned me there._

_I carried nothing, I was not in any way prepared to face the stern Wilderness surrounding me. I frittered away precious strength shouting for Caesar and weeping, but of course he did not come back, and any search party was sure to be led Astray. Suffice it to be said I was found a few days later by a band of natives, reduced to a state of the basest Savagery, having thrown off most of my clothes in the heat and so burnt by the sun they first took me for one of theirs. They were in company of a dragon (a beast that must have been stolen from one of our grounds, for she was a Yellow Reaper), on the way Northward carrying a Wiradjuri delegation, and those of a few other savage Tribes, into confederate territory, to a council of War. By the time we arrived at their destination, they had gathered I was British, though I’d given a false name, and a good proportion of those in attendance, including the runaway Convicts, were in favour of having me Slain. But the Wiradjuri leader, a man called Windradyne, made himself my Protector, on what grounds I cannot fathom, and he wielded much Influence with the rabble. When at last their Debates were adjourned, I told him I had lost my way from a Cattle-station near Cudgegong, whence his people and the dragon returned me, and the stockmen conveyed me across the Blue Mountains to Sydney._

_I am under no Illusion that That chief’s actions, and his people’s, have preserved my life. Yet I did not rest until I’d drawn all the enemy Camps I’d seen on my father’s maps, and given all the Intelligence I could of their strength, arms, and provisions. The Wiradjuri were driven into the desert shortly after, and Windradyne captured and executed. He took six men to restrain him, and they had to break a Musket over his back before they could place the noose. I was fourteen years old when these things happened._ _I would like to be able to say I acted as I did to avenge my Mother’s death, or for England, or to end a war. But you said you value truthfulness, and the Truth is that I betrayed them for the few words of praise it won me from my father’s lips, and for Caesar’s envious stare, a short-lived but Gratifying proof of my having won that particular Battle._

_I do not ask your Pardon, but should you wish to curtail our correspondence forthwith, I cannot object._

_Yours truly,_  
 _Lt Rankin_  
  
  
Horatio stared at the open book, a chill creeping over his back that had nothing to do with the cool night.

He had spent his whole life around dragons, and had thought himself tolerably informed of their nature: fierce, yes; belligerent, of course, and sometimes wholly ignorant of human needs, but fundamentally good-natured, attacking only for defense or hunger, or at the orders of a human war-captain. He would never have credited the notion of a dragon attempting to poison a child, or exposing a helpless youth in the wilderness.

And yet... Lieutenant Rankin had never moved to ingratiate himself, never once sought to put himself into a good light. Why should he start now, and tell tales? Horatio scrambled to his feet to pace the precipice afresh. If he acknowledged the truth of the lines before him, he also had to accept another: How could one help hating dragons, and treating them with spite, if one had been used so? Was all that coldness and brutality, after all, founded in fear?

He had never been daunted by distance, had not wasted a single thought on it since first running to the Corps at the age of six. But all of a sudden, he found himself cursing even the day’s flight between Ayrshire and Laggan. What he would give to know what Rankin’s spirits had been when he had written the message — his face detached and cold, writing a confession he did not truly feel sorry for? Or, Heavens beware, that same raw despair he’d witnessed on the way back from Edinburgh, and again by the lake? _Did_ he stay away from the lake?

“Horatio?” he heard Temeraire’s voice, and spun around.

“Yes… yes, Temeraire?” he managed, trying to conceal the book behind his back.

The dragon’s great shape half-protruded from the cave. Likely he’d roused all the crew and caused havoc within, and indeed the first tired faces were poking out between the dragon’s forelegs. When Horatio did not move or speak, Temeraire craned his neck to peer at him, concerned and a little suspicious.

“Horatio, are you well? Yes? But… but why are you reading that book, all alone?”

  
  
\- -  


  
Stuart had given up listening for his name when the mail was handed out. There had been no more letters, save one in late October, addressed _Lt. S J Rankin, Esq._ , which he had ripped open in a stupid haste, only for the thrill to vanish away to nothing when he’d pulled out a sheet covered in dainty writing, not Captain Laurence’s for sure. Cousin Louisa had written, to inform him of _our dear mutual friend’s, Miss Ann Wirral’s, engagement to marry one James Pritchard Lloyd, a very worthy gentleman, though regrettably not of Our circles, but a self-made man — a shipowner and Entrepreneur,_ this last word spelled painstakingly in single letters, leaving Stuart in no doubt as to the intended slight. _She spits her acid poorly,_ he thought as he stuffed the letter into his pocket, wondering why Louisa imagined he should care whom Miss Wirral had been sold to at last.

He had altogether too much time on his hands. Their exercises were sadly curtailed now, with Captain Gallagher obliged to excuse herself from drills more often than not, on account of backache or other ill health. Her first lieutenant, Nicholls, took over command, but it did not answer well: Procella was wholly distracted, failing at a good proportion of the fixed targets she had previously mastered with ease, if she could even be persuaded to move from the castle’s courtyard where she sat with her head on her captain’s windowsill in a posture of great unhappiness, no matter Captain Gallagher’s appeals to her duty and better reason.

There was no more dancing now, no music in the hall. Stuart paid his supply visits to Loch Ericht, but never lingered beyond the call of duty. He took no more pleasure in swimming, or reading, though he still went to the baths to stand at the metal grate and study the dragon eggs swaddled in their niches. A golden October passed outside, cobwebs wafting through the air like silver thread, and the dew-lacing on the heather gave way to real frost crackling under his feet when he stepped on it, gingerly. Then the first autumn storms swept the land, chilling their bones so everyone flocked into the baths to thaw, and Stuart retreated to the solitude of the empty dormitory, Dot’s the only presence he tolerated at his side. He borrowed Captain Lowe’s almanac and sextant, and applied himself to learning the Northern constellations, but he soon gave it up again, for lack of use: He’d return to Australia, to Caesar where his duty lay. So he stood at the window for hours watching the sky, forbidding himself from scanning for a great pair of black wings, and had reassured himself of his utter indifference and the perfect foolishness of pouring out one’s heart to a stranger, when at last, Temeraire returned.

It was the second week of November, another spell of icy rain and violent wind. No word had been sent ahead, and they’d have been too distracted to listen in any case. Captain Gallagher had slipped Lieutenant Nicholls’ watch to take Procella flying at dawn, and, so far as Stuart had gathered from the general uproar and Midwingman Cavendish’s ashen face, brought on another bout of her bleeding condition. Procella had been beside herself, requiring the joint efforts of most of the castle’s dragons to restrain her, until one of the surgeons had hit upon the happy notion of smelling-salts, and a whole tub of dark tea mixed with laudanum to follow, until Procella had sat down on her haunches, dazed, and her Captain could be recovered and bundled away to her room. Afterwards, Stuart sat by the fireplace in the entrance hall, trying to distract himself with the _Gazette_ , when Dot at his feet suddenly jumped up and barked, wagging his tail.

“Sit,” Stuart snapped, and the dog reluctantly lowered his hindquarters, whimpering. Stuart turned in the armchair, wondering what the fuss was about, and saw a knot of officers in coats, scarves and hats spilling in, to much shouting and joking and stamping of feet. He instantly recognized Captain Laurence between them.

Someone pulled on a bell-string and the servants came rushing in, with even greater pandemonium as everyone began calling for things to be sent to their unprepared rooms, or for drinks, or for more braziers in the clearings. Stuart abandoned the paper and attempted to withdraw, but Dot’s bark had drawn attention to them, and the next moment, Captain Laurence extracted himself from the melee to walk towards them.

“Rankin! Why, I think I recognize that creature,” he exclaimed, pointing at Dot whose tail wagged harder. “You’ve been taking your duty very seriously, I see!”

He knelt down and took off his gloves to stroke the terrier. His clothing yet radiated the cold, smelling of frost and gunpowder smoke, and, Stuart registered with a pang of worry, he had grown thinner, his cheeks hollower. Perhaps he had been ill — too ill to write? A flicker of hope rose in his chest, but he doused it, quickly. “I do not know what you mean,” he said, curtly, and saluted. “Welcome back to Laggan, sir.”

“Yes,” Captain Laurence said, still grinning at the dog. “Yes, it is so very good to be back! … Back home, I’d almost have said. How is everyone? Captain Lowe, and Veloxia? Molly? And Lucy, how’s Lucy? She didn’t reply to my letters.”

 _Letters_ , Stuart thought, with the most absurd sting. “Tolerably well, sir,” he said. “Dot, _heel_!”

Dot, who’d rolled onto his back to better let himself be scratched, reluctantly got up and trotted back to Stuart’s side. Captain Laurence sighed, rising. “Right. Well, I’ll go up and say hello, then, and to the baths later — God, how I missed the baths! I shall see you at supper, I believe?”

“Yes, sir,” Stuart said, resolving to have his food brought to his room, and to avoid the baths from now.

He had meant to retreat as quickly as possible, but Albus’ captain waved at him to lend a hand with some crates of papers and instruments that needed to be brought inside from the rain. Afterwards, Captain Lowe appeared on his crutches, attracted by the commotion, and pressed him to move all available pieces of upholstered furniture into a semicircle around the fireplace, calling for cups of hot grog, so the returned captains could assemble there and await dinner in a comfortable fashion, and he and Lieutenant Rankin would be the first to hear all their news.

They accepted the offer gladly, flocking together to drink, laugh, and talk. After a polite interval, Stuart rose, muttering that he wanted to see whether Ingram or Garrick needed a hand, and almost collided with Captain Laurence when he fled up the stairs.

“Cannot you watch out-“ he began, and only then looked up.

Captain Laurence wore a strange expression. “You’re funny, Rankin,” he said, shaking his head. “ _Tolerably well_ … Goodness, you might have told me Lucy’s child was being born.”

“What?” Stuart said, staring.

“Yes,” Captain Laurence nodded. “Will you help me distract her dragon? I’m told it will take a while yet, and even brave Captain Gallagher can’t bite down on something all night.”

“Oh,” Stuart said, swallowing. After the morning’s experience, he was under no illusion as to the likely consequences of such an endeavour — acid burns deep to the bone, most like. “I’ll go, sir,” he said, hastily. “Your place is here.”

He left Captain Laurence staring, and hurried to Veloxia’s clearing first, to gather his thoughts and enlist her help. Then, they went to Procella’s clearing where, fortunately, the dragon still snored, stupefied. Stuart sent away the handful of lingering crewmen, on a pretext of helping out the new arrivals, and they settled down near the entrance of the clearing to wait. After a while, Procella roused, sluggishly batting open an eye.

“How is Lucy?” she demanded.

“All is well, but you must let her rest,” Stuart said, trying to put confidence in his voice. “Procella, Veloxia and I were wondering whether you’d care to join us, for reading this book? It is called _The Book of King Arthur and His Noble Knights of the Round Table_.”

Procella blinked. “Does it have treasure in it?”

“Oh, yes,” Veloxia piped, before Stuart could reply. “Heaps and _heaps_ of it!”

“Well, let me hear it, then,” Procella mumbled, dubiously, and shuffled aside to clear space on her heated platform before dropping her head back onto her foreclaws.

Stuart threw a dark look at Veloxia as he paged ahead to the chapters on the quest for the Holy Grail, wondering — doubting — whether the dragons would be satisfied with so abstract a prize. But Veloxia hopped onto the platform and then looked at him eagerly, so he hesitated only briefly before he clambered up to join them, distantly wondering what his father should make of him, reading bedtime stories to not just one, but two dragons.  
  


\- -

  
  
“Rankin!” Stuart heard someone hiss.

He had been nodding over the book, in that sheltered nook between the dragon’s bodies. “Yes?” he asked, pushing Veloxia’s wing-membrane aside, to see Captain Laurence.

“Are they still sleeping? Oh, thanks Heaven… well done,” Captain Laurence said, to add, in a low whisper: “It’s not going well... Something’s quite wrong. The surgeons are talking of using their knives to get the child no matter what, as if she weren’t the Captain of one of our most valuable beasts! So I’ll fetch Molly. She knows a good deal about these things. She might be able to do something.”

“Do you… do you want me and Veloxia to go, sir?” Stuart asked, with rising worry, but Captain Laurence shook his head.

“No. Stay, please, and try to keep Procella calm… a maddened dragon is the last thing Lucy needs now. Where will I find Molly? Did you take her to the cottage I told you?”

“Yes, sir,” Stuart said.

Captain Laurence nodded, thanked him, and hurried away.

Stuart huddled down again, his thoughts all in turmoil, and not only on account of Captain Gallagher, if he was perfectly sincere. Was it a father-to-be’s concern he had just witnessed, or merely a friend’s and comrade’s? Why should the distinction bother him at all? He called himself to reason, settling back against Veloxia’s side. Whatever the true nature of Captain Laurence’s liaisons, it did not concern him in the slightest. If the child was a girl, the other might even be called justified in not acknowledging the connexion, when he could only have very little to do with her upbringing. But if it was a boy, he ought to claim him, the good of the service alone demanded as much... and marriage it would have to be, if he did not wish to damage his family’s name.

He drifted back to sleep, eventually, and only roused at dawn, confused and groggy, when Captain Laurence ran into the clearing, waving both arms over his head and shouting: “Rankin, Procella, wake up! Wake up, I tell you! The child’s here — a perfect little lass!”

“Wish you joy, sir,” Stuart muttered, running a hand over his tired face, and quickly moved aside before Procella could crush him in her haste.

  
\- -

Horatio rounded up everyone he could lay hands on, to see the child before breakfast.

“Well done, Captain,” Admiral Portland said as the baby was handed around to be admired. “A perfect little cherub.”

“Congratulations,” Lieutenant Rankin muttered, stroking the infant girl’s dark hair, before passing her on to Lieutenant Nicholls.

“I’m sorry to be such a nuisance. I’ll be up again soon enough,” Captain Gallagher muttered, wincing as she tried to sit up.

“Nonsense, stay put! You’ve had a wretched hard time of it. I order you to stay in bed and take your possets until you are stronger,” Admiral Portland said. He raised his hat to Molly Murray who still stood by the door with her eyes cast down, next to a sour-looking Blythe, and said: “Much obliged to you, Miss,” putting a golden guinea into her hand as he went, and Molly startled, bodily, and stared down at the coin.

The admiral and most of the officers filed out again. Horatio, who had been last in the line, placed the child back in her cradle and tapped it enthusiastically.

“Stop that, Captain Laurence, or you’ll make her sick,” Lucy said, lifting her head with a weak smile. “Which would be a damned nuisance… after all that trouble getting her to feed.”

“Sick? Nonsense. Only look, she delights in it — a born airwoman,” he said, grinning as he bent over to begin a flying-song,

“ _Let the wind and the rain and the hail go high_  
 _And snow come tumbling from the sky_  
 _She’s as nice as apple pie_  
 _She’ll be flying far and high_ … What’s she to be called?”

“Juliet,” Lucy said. “Juliet Gallagher.”

“That’s a good name,” Horatio nodded. “Much better than some one-armed navy clodpole’s… Not an easy one for rhymes, though, mind you. Let me see… _Juliet_...”

“It is very cold in here,” Lucy said.

“Cold?” Horatio said, bewildered, and turned to the fire. “It is stifling hot in here, I assure you of it! Perhaps it is that which makes you uncomfortable. Let me open a window."

“No, please don’t,” she said, shivering as she drew the quilt to her chin, and repeated: “It is very cold.”

“Lucy, are you well?”

“Yes, only so… very tired.”

“Of course. You must do as the admiral says — take your possets and sleep. I’ll leave you in peace.”

“No, please, stay,” she muttered. “Will you sing for me? I’m afraid I can’t play… just yet.”

He nodded. “Yes, of course, any rabble-rousing song you care to name, in honour of a new fighting daughter of Eire! — Just a moment.”

He stepped into the forechamber, where Molly and a servant were bundling towels and bedsheets into a basket, soaked through with blood as though one of the dragons’ cows had been slaughtered there. Molly looked up, timidly, and drew out the coin.

“I don’t dare take it, sir,” she whispered. “There’s something not right. She’s in too much pain still, and it was so ragged and torn, I cannae say for certain it’s all come out.”

“All… out?” he echoed, at a complete loss as to what she meant, and then hastily cut her off when she would have expounded. “No, no, Molly, you must keep the money, it is your just deserve. She is the captain of an immensely valuable dragon. — By which I mean, if you have the slightest concern, we shall send for a doctor,” he added, privately doubting his chances of finding a physician willing to let himself be dragged through a sleeting rain, to attend to an aviator.

“Thank ye, Captain,” Molly said, visibly relieved. “I would stay with ‘er… but my children are alone.”

“Yes… yes. It is fine. You may go — Lieutenant Rankin will take you back if you ask him, I am sure. Come back if he makes a fuss.”

She nodded and slipped away, on her usual silent soles.

Horatio went back into the room to sit down next to Lucy’s bed. “So, what would you like to hear?” he asked. “ _The Green Linnet? Clare’s dragons? The Boys of Wexford?_ — Lucy? Lucy, are you sleeping?” He turned to look at her properly, and then jumped to his feet and grasped her by the shoulders to shake her, full of a rising, terrible dread. “Lucy, answer me!” 

  
  
\- -

  
  
“Procella must go to the breeding grounds,” Admiral Portland said, gravely, after the dismal feast for Juliet’s baptism, a day after her mother had been laid in the ground. _The lord giveth and the lord taketh away._

Nobody protested. They’d all known the shattering truth since the morning, when Procella had growled at the baby when they had brought it out to show her, thinking the sight might offer some comfort. But Temeraire had barely stopped her dousing the child in acid, and she’d roared and declared she wanted nothing to do with it, and would never forgive it for murdering her captain. She still paced her clearing now, knocking down trees and hissing dangerously at anyone who dared approach.

“Captain Laurence, if you have a moment, I should be glad to speak to you alone,” Admiral Portland said.

Horatio nodded, his head still curiously empty and ringing as though a shell had exploded close by, when all there had been for the last two days was a dreary hush, only broken by the newborn child’s hungry wailing. He followed the admiral into the smoking room, and shook his head at the cigar offered him.

“Right,” Portland sighed, closing the box. “I believe you understand the extent of difficulty that the loss of a trained heavyweight places the Corps in?”

Horatio nodded. He did not quite trust his voice.

“Good,” the admiral said. “So you will surely also understand the pressing need to take all necessary steps to avoid it. Procella might want nothing to do with the child now, but that is not to say there’s no hope in a few years’ time, especially if the girl turns out a likeness… But we cannot wait for that. The Queen’s enemies will not wait for that.”

“Indeed,” Horatio said, slowly.

“Yes. But fortunately, Captain Gallagher has family in County Armagh, where the Corps keeps a breeding ground… unimproved by modern standards, I am sorry to say, but it can accommodate Procella. And I believe that, by the grace of God, only one of her three sisters is presently married, meaning there could be two other girls ready to take her place, as soon as Procella tires of her exile.” Horatio stiffened, but the Admiral went on, with the cool calculation of one planning a campaign: “The other young ladies have not been raised to our ways, of course. But with a little… encouragement, I believe they will be convinced of their duty.”

“Their… duty?”

“Yes,” Portland said. “Yes. You and Temeraire will escort Procella to the training grounds, and present Captain Gallagher’s sisters with their niece. And when you do so, you will make yourself perfectly agreeable, do you understand? You will speak of the service in the best possible terms, and emphasize the very great desirability of them visiting their sister’s bereaved dragon. A handsome and good-natured fellow like you is just the thing to dissipate a young lady’s fears about joining our ranks... besides, your family’s name is sure to inspire confidence.” And when Horatio stared, silent, he added: “Laurence, you do understand how much is at stake here?”

“I do,” Horatio said, slowly. “But Sir, am I to take Temeraire, and Captain Gallagher’s daughter, and Procella, all at the same time? I cannot vouch for the infant’s safety, under those conditions. You saw the dragon’s wrath.” 

“Yes,” Portland said. “But Temeraire’s the only beast we have capable of restraining her alone. I cannot send more dragons, and make a show… We must not have a noise about this.”

“You have two formations sitting around unused!” Horatio broke out, and Portland frowned.

“Moderate your tone, Captain. You’ve no notion of the demands of running a training covert, and of keeping the admiralty happy. The Corps finds itself under much more public scrutiny, these days, and any excuse will do to divert funds from our beasts and give them to the Army and Navy instead, for better guns not given to walking away when the urge takes them… Do you have any notion what it costs to hatch out and train a dragon, and how it will look that we are given to losing them like this? In retrospect, Captain Gallagher ought to have guarded her virtue better, of course, when she knew she’d be set to an egg-“

“You _congratulated_ her, two days ago," Horatio almost shouted, grief and tiredness rubbing together to ignite into anger, “and now, you find fault with her _virtue_?”

“Laurence, be silent, before I have to discipline you. This is an order, not a request. You’ll depart tomorrow, and cross at Portpatrick. If it will soothe your temper, you may take that little Reaper from Procella’s formation — she seems to have a way with the beast — and God bless.”   


\- -

The breeding grounds of Armagh were a joyless sight, mud-coloured snow on autumn-parched grassland, not improved by the prospect of Lough Neagh, leaden under an overcast sky.

“You must eat, Procella,” Stuart reminded her, for what felt the hundredth time since their departure, and Veloxia nudged her encouragingly. “Yes! Only see, the food looks so very tasty.”

Procella did not reply, and only slowly took one of the morsels the keepers had brought up as a form of welcome gift to chew upon, leaving the bulk of it aside before slumping down again.

“May I?” Veloxia chirped, and when Procella only gave a disinterested snort, she helped herself to a piece of beef. “The view is very charming,” she said, munching, “and if you look to the west, you can almost see Captain Gallagher’s family’s house, and-”

Procella gave a warning hiss, and Veloxia hastily hopped backwards.

“Leave her,” Stuart said. “We can take a look around, and see whether we can find a better… hollow,” for that was all there was: marshy flats, flocks of seabirds, a steel-grey sky. Wasteland, only good for dragon-keeping, and barely sufficient even for that. The beasts he’d seen had been almost invariably ancient, blind, deaf or forgetful. All were filthy, and the perennial mud had caused a sort of scrofula to break out on their feet, though they did not seem to care much, trudging in paths deeply etched into the land, from their dens to the feeding troughs and back, without looking up. Stuart felt strangely glad when Veloxia finally took off again, out of that dreadful monotony.

“There is a nice-looking place over there,” Veloxia chirruped, ever ready to be pleased, and pointed a claw at a raised hillock, south-facing and out of the general muck, with a few ruins of what might once have been a castle. She darted down to land on a broken wall, flexing her claws and turning like a chicken on a perch. “What a lovely fortress! I wonder whether your King Arthur came by here, and-“

A dangerous growl interrupted her chatter, and a dragon reared up from the shrubs. “It is _taken!_ ”

Veloxia shrieked and jumped off the wall, almost flinging Stuart off her back. He pulled himself back up in the straps, patting the trembling Veloxia’s shoulder, and hastily leaned forward to call: “Our apologies, sir! We did not see you there. Veloxia, let us-“

“Wait.”

The dragon paused with an air of surprise, and then clambered out of the hollow between the ruins, laboriously shaking himself to dislodge strands of grass and wilted leaves. A Malachite Reaper, Stuart thought, the conformation plain enough even though age had weathered his green stripes to shades of brown and bronze, making him almost invisible in the thicket. He wore a gold ring studded with green stones, polished and catching the sparse light as he craned his head forward. “Do I know you?” he rumbled.

“Oh, he is mad,” Veloxia whispered, edging backwards. “He has lost his marbles! Rankin, don’t-“

“ _Rankin_?” the dragon growled, fixing Stuart. “You are indeed a _Rankin_?”

Stuart nodded, involuntarily hunching his shoulders — even in this desolate corner, his father’s reputation should haunt him. “Yes, sir,” he muttered, determined to leave things in the vague. “Lieutenant Stuart Rankin of Veloxia. As I said, we are sorry to intrude, and will-“

“Come forward,” the dragon said, with a voice of surprising authority. “Let me have a look at you.”

Stuart obeyed, stiffly, and the dragon lowered his head to nose him over. Veloxia gave a small, warning growl, half-unfurling her wings. “Don’t get ideas! He is _my_ lieutenant, he looks after _me_ , and you cannot have him.”

The old dragon gave a strange noise, like stones being ground over one another, and Stuart looked up, confused, to realize the beast was chuckling.

“Oh, the fire of youth!” he said. “Don't you worry, _Veloxia_. Do these limbs look like they will fly fast enough to please a young man?” He unfolded his own dulled wing, with a creaking of joints. “I would if I could, of course. If I were still full of sap, I would call it my every right to claim him.”

“Oh, what an impudent thing to say,” Veloxia said, stubbornly. “Rankin, come, we’re leaving.”

“Impudent?” the dragon rumbled, touching a claw to his collar. “Methinks not. Why, he is a Rankin, of my own captains’ line... Good captains they were, loyal and brave, in the days of my dear Perceval, and Cassius after him… But times change, and so do people. I can tell a rotten egg when I see one, and chose to stay alone before accepting one of those… This one you have here, however…” He interrupted himself, folding his wing back, and turned his eyes back to Stuart, with an expression of great, startling tenderness. “I am sorry. This place wastes away one’s manners. I quite forgot to introduce myself. My name is Celeritas, and I am exceedingly pleased to make your acquaintance, Lieutenant.”   
  


\- -

  
Horatio stole a look around the table when the main course was carried in: a very large bowl of potatoes, and a very lean side of mutton, which grey-haired Mr Gallagher carved with his eyes kept down and his hands trembling.

He forced himself to a smile when one of Lucy’s sisters, Patricia, brought him his plate. “I cannot regret your servant’s illness, Madam, if it means so charming a replacement,” he said, nodding at the girl, only to be met with a mortified look from Mrs Gallagher and realize the lack of servants had been quite the wrong thing to comment on.

So he swallowed down his request for more wine, and smiled at his hostess with what he hoped would pass for perfect contentment. The sudden arrival of two dragons on the small estate had not been welcome, he knew, and that of a new granddaughter even less so. Old Mr Gallagher alone, a former captain of riflemen, had displayed some manifest symptoms of grief, opening Lucy’s violin-case to run a hand over the instrument, before turning away to cover his face. But the other mementos Horatio had brought — Lucy’s green coat, her sword and pistol-belt — had disappeared without trace, and he could not grow easy with Mrs Gallagher’s brittle formality. He could not decide whether it was sorrow, or mistrust, or even shame for the small, dank house they inhabited, that caused her frigidity. He only wished they had not felt obliged to invite him to stay, even after he'd told them the crews were obliged to report at the next covert, and secretly handed Lieutenant Ingram money for an inn to avoid wholly putting them out.

He tried to focus his thoughts on Procella, to better bear the stifled atmosphere and the conversation of Lucy’s youngest sister, Honoria, who seemed to have been allocated the odious task of his dinner partner, and turned to speak to him with a sort of mortified obedience whenever her mother’s eyes turned her direction. His officer’s heart bled at the thought of a young fighting-dragon buried in a pen for toothless dotards, and yet, something else in him balked at the thought of the reverse, more vehemently so the longer he listened to Honoria’s anguished talk of her botanical watercolours, the embroidery she did for church, and the early frost this autumn. She bore a striking resemblance to Lucy, but here, all likeness ended.

The clock stuttered forward, painfully, until at last, the coffee had been drunk, the ladies about to retire, and there was no putting it off any longer. He summoned whatever manners he could, and raised his glass to Mrs Gallagher. “Madam, my compliments on such a splendid dinner, and on your delightful family.”

"We are honoured to have you, Captain,” she said, with a papery smile.

“Thank you. I should… I should like to say a few words, if I may,” he said and rose to his feet. All faces turned up to him: Patricia, Honoria, the married eldest, Augusta, and their mother, all tense and uneasy, save for Mr Gallagher who sat back staring vacant, still holding his fork.

Horatio cleared his throat, trying to remember the words he’d prepared, and began, stiffly: “Captain Gallagher was a… an exemplary officer, conscientious of her duty, and well liked by all. She was taken far too soon, from you, from her daughter, and most of all from her dragon. My commanders have ordered Procella to be brought to the breeding grounds situated here, in the hope that you, Madam, and your daughters will find it in you to visit her, and one day will let young Juliet do the same, for there could be no-one better suited to understanding your loss.”

“The… dragon?” Mrs Gallagher said, bitterness breaking through her careful self-possession at last. “Captain, I beg your pardon, but have my daughters and I no… no greater worry at present, than to soothe a wild beast, with Lucinda gone and a bastard child thrown on our doorstep? Is this the way the Corps looks after its own?”

Horatio looked back, anger and sorrow swirling into a dark mess, quite closing his throat. He suddenly found himself missing Lieutenant Rankin’s calm presence, with all his heart, the only thing that had kept him sane during the past days of travel, though they’d scarcely exchanged a handful of sentences. But Rankin was at the breeding grounds, with Procella.

“You ask why the Corps doesn’t keep the dragon, or the child? Well, I shall tell you why,” he said, bluntly. Orders be damned — what would Rankin make of him standing here, stringing along pretty lies? There was one merit in the admiral’s scheme he could see, one thing which his present state of misery, and the book yet tucked in his coat-pocket, threw into sudden sharp focus: if one chose the life, if one chose a dragon, one must do so freely.

“I will allow it is difficult to understand, with the voice of reason," he said. "So I must beg you to believe me that the bond between a dragon and rider truly committed to one another is rare, precious, and runs deeper than blood... and the bond between your daughter and her dragon was such a one. Procella has lost her chosen captain, and that, to her, is like the sun falling from the sky, like the ground gone from underneath her feet, like…” He broke off, swallowing. “It is something that outruns ordinary understanding, a kind of loss that, if numbed by time, can never be healed. And for this reason, Procella has rejected the child we have brought you, the child who, in her view, has caused this terrible loss... and I am sorry to say that many of my colleagues, and even commanders, are inclined to take a similar view. Do you truly wish for your innocent granddaughter to live as a relict in the Corps, where she’ll be damned to a life of blame, especially if Procella does not change her mind, which, if I may say so, looks damnably like? — If funds are an issue, I hope this will go some way,” he said, pulling out an envelope signed in Admiral Portland’s hand, an assurance for the small orphan’s pension and a deed on the considerably larger sum of Lucy’s funds, saved over fourteen years in the Corps, to toss down between the dishes, before leaning forward to fix Mrs Gallagher and add, with a scowl: "And should Juliet show a true aspiration to her mother’s life, I assure you you need only write, and the Corps will always find her a berth… Though we should never require her, nor any of your own daughters, to be a poor replacement for something that, ultimately, can never be replaced. — That is all I have to say. Thank you, and good evening,” he said, bowed, and turned to flee from the room, before his voice might have cracked.

He found the inn’s old mare where he had tethered her, and finally succeeded at replacing the saddle. Horatio was an indifferent horseman, having always found it a dull exercise compared to flying, not helped by his father’s maxim that a young gentleman sat his horse with a straight back, not clinging to the animal’s side or wrapping both arms around its neck, and the fact that Mr Tharkay’s lovely chestnut rahvan, the only animal in the stable worth aspiring to, had always remained firmly out of children’s bounds. But the borrowed mare knew the way back to her stable, trotting along the frozen path to the inn, and Horatio made no attempts to spur her, not particularly wanting to arrive anywhere.

“I thought you only meant to return tomorrow,” Temeraire said, surprised, when Horatio had returned the horse and walked out to check on him, in the small forest where the dragons had made their quarter for the night.

“It didn’t take as long as I thought,” Horatio said. “Our task here is done, I am afraid... It is very cold out here. An hour or two can see us to Belfast covert, if you like.”

Temeraire shook his head, thoughtful. “I should like to visit Procella again, in the morning, and see whether she needs anything… I am not sure where Veloxia has got to. I told her not to let Rankin try any foul tricks, or say mean things to Procella, but she has not returned yet.”

“I am sure she’ll make sure of it,” Horatio said, evasive. “But what of you, Temeraire?”

“I am comfortable,” Temeraire said. “Lieutenant Ingram brought me a bullock, and read me Laurence’s last letter twice.”

“Good,” Horatio said, not finding it in him to be annoyed with Ingram's interference — it was hardly the lieutenant's fault that he and Temeraire had so little in common. They’d read the letter together once, at Portpatrick, and though Horatio had not given it his full attention, he recalled there had been another attempt to overturn the draconic property bill, this time taking aim at the landholdings allocated to dragons across large swathes of Scotland and Wales, which the former landowners and gentry would much prefer cleared for sheep-farming.

“Yes - you know,” Temeraire said, sitting up, “I have been thinking. I shall fly out to Ricarlee, once we are back in Scotland, and assure him Laurence will do everything to stop this foul bill from passing. And if anyone makes unlawful threats against him or his people before it is all settled, I shall teach them a lesson!”

“I thought you wanted to give politics a rest,” Horatio said, suppressing a sigh.

“Oh, but _that_ is not politics,” Temeraire said, faintly indignant. “ _That_ is simply doing the right thing.”

“Indeed,” Horatio said. “Temeraire...” and he added, all of a sudden, the words breaking out of him without real intention to give them voice: “Temeraire, are you happy? Do you not miss father?”

Temeraire blinked. “Why, I do,” he said. “But it is nice to be back in the Corps. I only hope we will see some fighting soon, so you may have some prizes, and I can send word to Laurence, and to Iskierka… And I like my crew, and you are a good captain, even if you might make a bigger effort with our books, and learn only a very little Chinese…” He interrupted himself, before adding, quite without irony: “But all that does not signify, because there is no chance at all of your killing Laurence.”

“Oh, Temeraire,” Horatio said, faintly. _I still have every chance of doing him some very great damage,_ he thought, but he stayed silent, and Temeraire nudged him once more and then curled himself back up. Horatio watched his sinuous black shape, incongruous in the Irish autumn mud, and then slowly walked back to the inn, searching his pockets as he went. He was almost out of funds again, but the pennies remaining should suffice for a night's oblivion, on something cheap.

\- -

Stuart felt chilled to the bone when he finally pushed open the door to the inn, blowing on his numbed hands and stamping his feet which responded with a throbbing pain as sensation returned. He pulled Dot from under his coat and put him down, and the little dog scrambled away into the warm room. Looking around the tables and chairs, Stuart could spy no familiar faces, the crewmen evidently sensible enough to turn in early — all except one, he conceded, when Dot barked and scurried across to a figure in a green coat who sat slumped forward at a table, an empty bottle before him.

Stuart followed the dog to grasp the man’s shoulder and shake him. “Wake up!” he snapped. “Is this the sort of respect you accord a dead comrade?”

He let go and stepped back, abruptly, when the man stirred: the swollen, reddened face barely recognizable for Horatio Laurence’s.

“Rankin, you fool,” he growled. “I was sleeping soundly at last.”

“Then you ought to go to your room and sleep there,” Stuart said, trying to cover his confusion. “We have a long flight tomorrow.”

But Captain Laurence only buried his face back in his hands. “I’m not going back. The admiral’ll kill me.”

“He won’t, sir. Come,” Stuart said, indicating the set of stairs that led to the guest rooms.

“Oh, he will!” Captain Laurence muttered, without looking up. “I’ve done none 'o what he told me. I couldn’t… Oh, I am rotten! True devotion does not compare, true devotion accepts — but I compare, all the time, and cannot help it… I could not let it happen again, I could not... Poor, poor little Juliet…”

“Orders are orders, sir," Stuart said, stiffly, not sure what to make of this babble. "It is not your fault you had to give up the child. So you must—“

At this, Captain Laurence sat back in his chair to blink up at him, rather stupidly. “Give up... the child?” he slurred. “Giver her up? Whyever should I... _give her up_?”

“What? Why, because…” Stuart said and tailed off, desperately hoping to have his meaning implied. But Captain Laurence did not seem to understand, and instead reached out for the bottle to upend it, with a regretful expression. Stuart drew a deep breath: he might as well be properly martyred. “Is she not your daughter, sir?” he asked.

“O’course not, Rankin, you idiot,” Captain Laurence snorted, still shaking the bottle as though he hoped it might magically refill itself. “God, how could she be? I’ve only been here six months, and in Canada before then…”

“Right,” Stuart said, trying to keep his voice level. “Right. In that case, sir, even more reason to let things rest. Come. I’ll help you up, and—“  
  
“Let things _rest_?” Captain Laurence exclaimed, slamming the bottle down on the table hard enough to break off the neck. “I shan’t _let it rest_! My friend died, and all they can talk about is how she has been _useful_! Like a bloody hammer! … And for what? To produce a daughter who would also be useful? What is this life, a fucking breeding program?”

“Sir, I beg you, be quiet,” Stuart hissed, catching the bottle before it might roll onto the floor. A few guests yet remained, and heads were turning in their direction. “Your crew might hear you, and-“

“Then they may hear me!” Horatio Laurence shouted, brandishing the broken glass. “They may hear all they like! What does it matter? No, listen, Rankin! What does it matter if she didn’t do it for _usefulness_ ’ sake, eh? Is it anyone’s business if she lay with that fellow, whoever he was, because she _wanted_ to? What are we, tools to be replaced in a box? I say —”

“This is no topic for public conversation,” Stuart broke in, desperate, and darted forward to grasp his wrist and wrench out the bottle neck. “Now come with me, sir, and for Heaven’s sake _shut up!_ ”

He took hold of him by one arm and the scruff of his neck to pull him up and away. Captain Laurence resisted, struggling against him when Stuart pushed him up the stairs, but he was too drunk to mount a proper defense. Stuart had no idea which room to take him to — Captain Laurence hadn't taken one, having been expected to stay at the Gallagher's house. But steps were approaching at the far end of the corridor, so Stuart hastily kicked open the door to his own small chamber to bundle him inside, leaning against the door to bar it.

“Right, sir,” he panted. “You may stay here. Only don’t go out, and pray don’t shout. Sleep and sober up, and you’ll feel better tomorrow."

Captain Laurence stumbled forward and slumped down on the narrow bed, the only piece of furniture there was. He stared ahead awhile, and then nodded, dully. Stuart nodded back, intending to leave and lock the door behind himself. But the other struggled to even remove his boots, hampered by drink and a bout of hiccoughs, so he walked across to help him take them off, and then the coat and braces, and finally the tie whose knot Captain Laurence, in his efforts to rid himself of it, was pulling ever tighter.

“Thank you, Rankin,” he muttered when Stuart was done folding everything up neatly, arranging the blanket, and placing the chamber pot near his head where he could reach it in case he should be taken ill. “Where… where are you going now?”

Stuart turned at the door. “I’ll sleep out in the clearing, sir.”

"No… no, please don’t... I need you. I missed you.”

Stuart paused, his hand tensing on the key. Captain Laurence was soundly drunk, not worth listening to, though not so far gone as to be a danger to himself, and he had discreetly removed all weapons — there could be no justification for lingering.

But something stirred in his chest, with unbroken vehemence, and before he could stifle it, he had snapped: “Then why did you never write back?”

He did not truly expect a reply, and pushed on the handle to leave, when Captain Laurence said: “I… I tried, Rankin. Every single evening. But I burnt it all up again. I could not write of the weather, or the navymen’s capers, or the views, while leaving out the one thing that mattered...”  
  
“Ah,” Stuart said, fixing his eyes on the peeling paint of the door.

“Rankin. Please,” he heard Captain Laurence mutter. “I’ve no way with words, but... but I’ll try, if you want… I have spent many years trying to look brave, so I know what showy displays aren’t bravery at all. But you _are_ , Rankin. You are brave… Not when you betrayed those people that helped you, no… but you were a child then. I mean now, refusing to be pushed around, and changing your ways with Veloxia, even if Caesar abused you, even if you were brought up to fear dragons… that’s the bloody bravest thing I’ve seen… Listen. I’ve read your letter, I keep it with me… You did wrong, yes. You betrayed them, badly. You abused Veloxia. But you changed, and… and I wish I had half your mettle, instead of carrying on betraying everyone, and myself… I know you didn't ask my pardon, and probably care nothing for it, but you have it, Rankin, you have it with all my heart. I only wish you would believe me, and let me befriend you, and stop hiding your scars...”  
  
Stuart's hand tensed on the doorframe, hard enough for his fingernails to leave small grooves in the wood. “My scars?” he said, harshly. “What, that one on my leg? I earned it poisoning helpless creatures. That is the man I am, sir. I am not going to hide it.”  
  
“No… no, that is the man you were. That is the past! Rankin, you’re capable of so much better. “   
  
“You are drunk, sir. You’re slurring.”  
  
“Maybe. I mean it, though.” 

“Sir, get out of my bed.”   
  
But Captain Laurence only muttered something and burrowed in deeper. Stuart stood, cursing. How ridiculous to be caught like this, one part of him wanting to flee and another longing to walk up to the other, to clasp him in his arms and not let go, the sum total of forces cancelling to keep him rigidly pinned in place, shivering in the cold of the night.  
  
“I… I saw my family’s dragon today,” he heard himself say. The dark and the smell of cheap liquor made the confession easier. “Not Caesar… Celeritas.”

“And?” Captain Laurence asked, after a while.

“And… and he told me about my great-uncle, and my great-grandfather… his first Captain, whom he calls _his dearest Percy..._ who won the Earldom fighting for the crown... And now Celeritas lives in a damp ruin, while my uncle lords it over in London. I only wish I could…” He broke off, quickly lifting a fist to his mouth.

“Rankin,” he heard Captain Laurence say, and turned around to see him propped up on an elbow, silver and gold in the moonlight. “Come. We’ll figure this out tomorrow. I’ll know what to say to you then… good words, sensible words, it’ll all make sense. Tomorrow. Now — sleep.”

He lifted up the blanket, and Stuart didn’t resist — he was so very cold. He slipped underneath, coat and all, and then lay on his back on the hard straw mattress. Turning his head to the side, he looked into the other’s eyes a moment, conscious of the warm spot where their arms and shoulders touched, warming him through.

Then Captain Laurence turned aside, and Stuart stared up at the damp ceiling, trying to remember the last time he had lain so close to another soul. It must have been in the days before his mother had died, he thought, a memory more precious than gold, and he lay perfectly still, wishing time would stop there and then. But sleep still came, no matter how hard he fought it. Just before consciousness lapsed away, the lake-serpent reared its head before his inner eye, streaming silvery water in the moonlight. _Great joy, or great sorrow…_ He’d have to tell Captain Laurence about it, tomorrow.


End file.
